Fluid Flow & Aerodynamics
why things fly, and why the usual explanation is wrong
Series

Venturi — the series

3 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. There is a constriction, and it is a consequence rather than a cause. A cambered section at 5 degrees, with one streamtube traced above it and one below. The tube above narrows by 16 per cent at mid-chord and the tube below by -112 per cent, so the venturi story's premise is true: the flow over the top really is squeezed more than the flow underneath. The difficulty is that the tube's upper boundary is a streamline, not a wall. Nothing put it there but the solution of the whole flow — the same solution that already contains the lift — so the narrowing is a way of describing the answer rather than a reason for it.

    Not half a venturi

    The air above a wing really is squeezed into a narrower channel, it really does speed up, and the pressure really does fall. Every step of the story is true and the whole is still not an explanation, because the channel's upper wall is a streamline — and where a streamline went is part of the answer, not part of the question.

    part 1 · misconceptions
  2. Below a critical downstream pressure the flow rate stops listening. The flow rate through the meter against the downstream pressure, for upstream pressures of 3 bar, 5 bar, 7 bar. As the downstream pressure falls the flow rises — until the throat reaches vapour pressure, after which it is flat: 0.470 L/s from 3 bar, reached at 2.554 bar downstream; 0.608 L/s from 5 bar, reached at 4.254 bar downstream; 0.720 L/s from 7 bar, reached at 5.954 bar downstream. Everything to the left of each knee delivers the same flow, so the device holds its flow rate against any disturbance downstream.

    The venturi that stops listening downstream

    In a venturi with real walls, the narrowing-speeds-it-up story is exact: continuity and Bernoulli run forward from the drawing. Followed far enough, the same story predicts its own limit. The throat's pressure cannot fall below the liquid's vapour pressure, and once it gets there the flow rate stops responding to anything downstream — the meter has become a limiter, and its throat is supersonic for the vapour-laden mixture passing through it.

    part 2 · misconceptions
  3. The throat holds the hammer back only while its cavity lasts. Left, pressure at the closing valve (red) and at the upstream face of the venturi (gold); right, the throat's cavity volume; after the valve shuts with a 5 mL cavity in the throat. The valve sees the full Joukowsky rise of 14.8 bar at once. The wave reaches the venturi 33.3 ms later, and for the next 7.9 ms the upstream pipe hears nothing: its pressure stays at 5 bar while the cavity is squeezed. When the cavity closes at 41.3 ms the surge passes into the upstream pipe at 13.8 bar above its steady pressure.

    A choked throat buys time, not silence

    A venturi whose throat has reached vapour pressure passes a flow the downstream pressure cannot change, and it is tempting to read that as isolation: whatever happens downstream, the upstream pipe will not hear it. Slam a valve downstream and it hears it. The cavity at the throat holds the surge back only for as long as it takes to fill, and then lets 93 per cent of it through.

    part 3 · misconceptions

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