hf: an R package to calculate head loss in pipelines

The head loss in pipes has been extensively studied and its precise calculation is of great importance in hydraulic projects.

In the design and analysis of piping, the three major pipe-flow problems are the determination of pipe diameter, flow rate and head loss for a given set of known variables.

The pressure loss due to friction of a liquid flowing in a pipe is usually calculated by the Universal equation. The friction factor (f) depends on the Reynolds number (Re) and the relative roughness of the tube.

For laminar flow (Re < 2000), the friction factor is easily calculated by a linear relationship with the Reynolds number.

For turbulent flow (Re > 4000), the friction factor can be determined by the Colebrook-White equation. However, the solution of this equation requires the use of iterative methods.

Three functions have been implemented covering the three major cases: pressure drop calculation (head_loss function), flow rate or speed calculation (flow_rate function) and diameter calculation (diameter function).

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

if (!require(devtools)) {
    install.packages("devtools")
}
devtools::install_github("joaobtj/hf")

Example

These are basic examples showing how to use the functions:

# load the hf package
library(hf)

# Calculate head loss for laminar flow
head_loss(D = 0.025, Q = 0.000000001, L = 200)
# Calculate head loss for turbulent flow
head_loss(D = 0.050, Q = 0.0006, L = 200, RC = 0.0001)

# Calculate flow rate for laminar flow
flow_rate(hf = 0.97, L = 10, D = 0.008, v = 3e-6)
# Calculate flow rate for turbulent flow
flow_rate(hf = 9.7, L = 10, D = 0.050, RC = 0.0001)

# Calculate diameter for laminar flow
diameter(hf = 19.7, L = 100, Q = 0.0000005)
# Calculate diameter for turbulent flow
diameter(hf = 9.7, L = 10, Q = 0.005, RC = 0.0001)