Turbulent drag reduction in nonionic surfactant solutions

There are only a few studies on the drag-reducing effect of nonionic surfactant solutions which are nontoxic and biodegradable, while many investigations of cationic surfactant solutions have been performed so far. First, the drag-reducing effects of a nonionic surfactant (AROMOX), which mainly consisted of oleyldimethylamineoxide, was investigated by measuring the pressure drop in the pipe flow at solvent Reynolds numbers Re between 1000 and 60 000. Second, we investigated the drag-reducing effect of a nonionic surfactant on the turbulent boundary layer at momentum-thickness Reynolds numbers Re-theta from 443 to 814 using two-component laser-Doppler velocimetry and particle image velocimetry systems. At the temperature of nonionic surfactant solutions, T=25 degrees C, the maximum drag reduction ratio for AROMOX 500 ppm was about 50%, in the boundary layer flow, although the drag reduction ratio was larger than 60% in pipe flow. Turbulence statistics and structures for AROMOX 500 ppm showed the behavior of typical drag-reducing flow such as suppression of turbulence and modification of near-wall vortices, but they were different from those of drag-reducing cationic surfactant solutions, in which bilayered structures of the fluctuating velocity vectors were observed in high activity. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3407666]