DISCUSSION

General meaning of laminar, transition and turbulent flow is important before

conduct this experiment. For laminar flow, it is defined as a highly ordered fluid motion with
smooth streamlines. In contrast, turbulent flow is a highly disordered fluid motion
characterized by velocity and fluctuations and eddies. Transition flow is known as a flow that
contains both laminar and turbulent regions.
In Reynolds apparatus experiment, laminar flow is obtained when a single ordered
line is seen after a thin filament of dye is injected into the transparent glass tube. A small
amount dispersion of dye can be observed throughout the flowing fluid. As for turbulent
flow, lines of dye breaks into myriad entangled threads of dye therefore it shows obvious
dispersion of dye. Throughout the experiment, the red dye line starts flowing in a straight
ordered line through the glass tube, and as the velocity increases after some time, the ordered
streamlines is seen to begin to disperse at about the middle of the streamlines, but still remain
the straight line at the earlier part. Next, the dispersion started to increase, indicating the
transition flow followed by turbulent flow.
In order to calculate the range for the laminar and turbulent flow , Reynolds number
formula is used. The area of bell mounted glass tube, the viscosity of water and the density of
water are needed. The density of water is 1000 kg/m3, the area of glass tube is 1.91x10-4 m2,
while the Kinematics viscosity for 25C water is 0.89 x 10 -6 m/s. The volume of water is
collected for 10 second and repeat for 3 times in order to get precise value. Then, from the
volumetric flow rate can lead the calculation to find velocity. Last step of calculation is
calculating the Reynolds number using the Reynolds equation. From Reynolds number
calculated, the condition of the flow can be estimated whether it is laminar, transition or
turbulent by comparing with appropriate given Reynolds number range.
The average Reynolds number value for laminar flow is 238.60,

2483.91 for

transition flow and lastly 13031.35 for turbulent flow. From this value, Reynolds number
formula can be estimate as Re < 2100 is laminar flow, if 2100 < Re < 4000 is transitional
flow and if Re > 4000 is turbulent flow. The calculation also can proved that the Reynold
number formula is dimentionless.

Finally the characteristic between laminar and turbulent flow can be differentiate.As
for laminar flow, it can be steady and unsteady , can be one, two, or three dimensional and
occurs at low Reynolds number. While as for turbulent flow, it always unsteady because
there are always random and swirling motions. Beside that, it always three dimensional and
occurs at high Reynolds number.