Self-Exciting Oscillations of Elastic Tube Conveying Fluid at Laminar and Turbulent Flow Regimes

Behavior of elastic tubes conveying fluids has been extensively studied during last 50 years in the context of biological and physiological applications. A lot of experimental works are conducted in a large range of Reynolds numbers, and mostly at turbulent flow regimes. But it is known that biofluids often circulate at laminar regimes. The unit based on the Starling resistor is commonly used to study experimentally the stability of the tube with fluid flowing into it. The behavior of the tube as the part of such unit has become a separate issue, and is also widely studied experimentally, analytically and numerically. In this work we experimentally investigate the influence of the flow regime on the stability boundary and limit cycle oscillations of latex thin-walled tube. It is obtained that there are two main differences. At first, the oscillation frequency more essentially depends on a pressure drop in the tube for a fixed flow rate at laminar, than at turbulent regimes. Secondly, the oscillation amplitude is larger for the turbulent regimes, than for the laminar, when the other parameters are the same.