What is Absolute & Relative Roughness for Piping Material?

Absolute & Relative Roughness for Piping Material

Pipe absolute roughness

Pipe absolute roughness (e) tabulated are taken from from several sources. These values are for new pipes and typically for new design purpose. For aged pipes or debottlenecking purpose, higher roughness are expected.

Piping Material Absolute roughness

  • 1m = 1,000 mm = 1,000,000 micron ; 1 mm = 1,000 micron

Pipe Relative roughness

Relative pipe roughness is the ratio of absolute roughness ( e) by and pipe diameter (D) :

Relative Pipe Roughness = e/D

(1) Binder, R.C. (1973), Fluid Mechanics , Prentice-Hall, Inc. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ).
(2) GPSA & Crane Technical Paper No. 410M
(3) Darby, R. (2001), Fluid Mechanics for Chemical Engineers, Vol 2, Marcel Dekker, (NY)
(4) BP GP 44-80
(5) Fiberglass Pipe Handbook, SPI Composites Institute
(6) Enginereed Software’s PIPE-FLO software www.engineered-software.com

2 Likes