Abstract
This paper describes the characteristics of a turbulent slug and the velocity field in the inlet region for pulsatile pipe flow. Experimental conditions of the present study were arranged systematically by pulsation frequency and velocity amplitude ratio A1. The experimental results regarding the onset of a turbulent slug, the propagation behavior of the slug, and the distributions of velocity and turbulence intensity inside the slug were compared with those for a turbulent patch in a pulsatile boundary layer on a flat plate. A close analogy was shown between them. When A1 was smaller than 0.608, the velocity distribution for the laminar region outside a slug was approximated by an analytical solution previously presented for pulsatile laminar flow with a smaller A1.
