This example models gas flow driven by an elevation difference (static head) in a simple piping system in FluidFlow. You’ll evaluate air at 25°C flowing through a 20 m long 4” Schedule 40 steel pipe, with the inlet and outlet pressures both set to 1.0 barg and an elevation drop from 20 m to 10 m.
You’ll build the network by adding boundaries and piping, defining the fluid and pipe data, selecting a results unit set, and running the hydraulic analysis. The key outputs include stagnation pressure loss, friction loss, flow rate, velocity, Reynolds number, and friction factor—then you’ll compare FluidFlow results to a hand calculation, noting that for compressible flow, elevation effects are typically small relative to other mechanical energy balance terms due to the low density of gases.