Pressure Drop in Cracked Pipelines with No Leakage
Author(s):
Kavi K. Kamal†, Jafar A. Ali*‡
Affiliation(s):
† Petroleum and Energy Engineering Department, Sulaimani Polytechnic University, Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region – F.R. Iraq.
‡ Department of Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Koya University, Koya KOY45, Kurdistan Region – F.R. Iraq.
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The current research work is carried out to investigate the effect of cracks on the flow characteristics of crude oil in the pipelines. The cracked pipes considered in the study were none fractured and with no leacking. Very little studies are exist in investigating the cracked pipelines, whilst the effects of fractures with leaking are widely investigated. The experiments were conducted in a horizontal pipe with a diameter of 24 mm and 2m long to measure the velocity and pressure. Cracks were made in the pipe with different sizes so different pipes were used, the pressure and velocity then measured at each run. It is found that the head loss in the area around the crack (named crack zone) was bigger than that in the up and down stream zones. Theoretically, the experimental work was simulated using ANSYS to solve the equations of motion and better analyze the flow behavior in the pipe. The pressure obtained from the solution of the governing equations were compared with the experimental measured pressure. The results reviled a direct relation between the crack size and the loss of pressure, the bigger pressure drop occur in case of bigger size of the crack.