Poiseuille Pipe Flow

Let's calculate the flow rate and speeds for the baseline pipe configuration:

Interactive Experiment

Explore the parabolic speed profile of viscous pipe flow using the interactive module at https://riano.app/module/poiseuille-pipe-flow.

Follow these steps to see the fourth-power sensitivity of flow rate to radius:

1. Set Pipe radius r to 1, Pipe length L to 20, Viscosity mu to 1, and Pressure drop deltaP to 10. Observe the Flow Q is approximately 0.0196 mL/s.
2. Now, double the Pipe radius r to 2, keeping other parameters constant.
3. Observe that Flow Q increases to approximately 0.314 mL/s. Notice that doubling the radius increases the flow by a factor of 16 (since 2⁴ = 16).