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The flow rate can be converted to a mean flow velocity V by dividing by the wetted area of the flow (which equals the cross-sectional area of the pipe if the pipe is full of fluid). Pressure has dimensions of energy per unit volume, therefore the pressure drop between two points must be proportional to the dynamic pressure q.
In many engineering applications the local flow velocity vector field is not known in every point and the only accessible velocity is the bulk velocity or average flow velocity ¯ (with the usual dimension of length per time), defined as the quotient between the volume flow rate ˙ (with dimension of cubed length per time) and the cross sectional area (with dimension of square length):
In physics and engineering, in particular fluid dynamics, the volumetric flow rate (also known as volume flow rate, or volume velocity) is the volume of fluid which passes per unit time; usually it is represented by the symbol Q (sometimes ˙). It contrasts with mass flow rate, which is the other main type of fluid flow rate.
In the following discussion, we define volumetric flow rate V̇ (i.e. volume of fluid flowing per time) as ˙ = where r = radius of the pipe (for a pipe of circular section, the internal radius of the pipe). v = mean velocity of fluid flowing through the pipe. A = cross sectional area of the pipe.
Flux F through a surface, dS is the differential vector area element, n is the unit normal to the surface. Left: No flux passes in the surface, the maximum amount flows normal to the surface.
with v 1, v 2 and v 3 the mean flow velocity in the associated cross sections. Then, according to the Borda–Carnot equation (with loss coefficient ξ=1), the energy loss ΔE per unit of fluid volume and due to the pipe contraction is:
A change in the density over time would imply that the fluid had either compressed or expanded (or that the mass contained in our constant volume, dV, had changed), which we have prohibited. We must then require that the material derivative of the density vanishes, and equivalently (for non-zero density) so must the divergence of the flow velocity:
For pipe flows a so-called transit time method is applied where a radiotracer is injected as a pulse into the measured flow. The transit time is defined with the help of radiation detectors placed on the outside of the pipe. The volume flow is obtained by multiplying the measured average fluid flow velocity by the inner pipe cross-section.