Understanding Laminar and Turbulent Flow

this video from the efficient engineer is sponsored by brilliant one of the very first things you learn in fluid mechanics is the difference between laminar and turbulent flow and for good reason these two flow regimes behave in very different ways and as we'll see in this video this has huge implications for fluid flow in the world

around us here we have an example of the laminar flow regime it's characterized by smooth even flow the fluid is moving horizontally in layers and there is a minimal amount of mixing between layers as we increase the flow velocity we begin to see some bursts of random motion this is the start of the transition

between the laminar and turbulent regimes if we continue increasing the velocity we end up with fully turbulent flow turbulent flow is characterized by chaotic movement and contains swirling regions called eddies the chaotic motion and eddies result in significant mixing of the fluid if we record the velocity at a single point in steady laminar flow

we'll get data that looks like this there are no random velocity fluctuations and so in general laminar flow is fairly easy to analyze for turbulent flow we'll get data that looks like this this flow is much more complicated we can think of the velocity as being made up of a time averaged component

and a fluctuating component the larger the fluctuating component the more turbulent the flow because of its chaotic nature analysis of turbulent flow is very complex since laminar and turbulent flow are so different and need to be analyzed in different ways we need to be able to predict which flow regime is likely to be produced by a