Laminar Flow
What Is Laminar Flow?
Laminar flow, or laminar air flow (also called streamline flow), is a liquid flow, in which the fluid moves in separate paths, as opposed to turbulent flow, where the fluid undergoes intermixing. As is clear from the definition, all the flow properties are always persistent in laminar air flow. On a flat level surface, laminar air flow consists of several parallel layers. When contacting with the flat surface, the fluid stays motionless, though all the layers begin to slide over one another.
When a liquid or gas flows evenly and with no turbulence, such a phenomenon can be called a “laminar flow”. A bright example would be the arcing streams in a fountain where a mass of pure water is fired like a bullet and sweepingly slicing through the air from one spot to another.
Applications
It’s applicable to those areas of industrial cleaning where the working environment must be critically clean — for example, in cleanroom technology or in laminar air flow cabinets. In general, quasi-laminar flows with low turbulence are widely used in preparing rooms for surgery, for creating semiconductor technologies and pharmaceutical products.
Operating Principle
Laminar flow is possible not only in pipes but in almost any confined space, such as cisterns and pipelines. However, there is an important condition that the surfaces of the nozzles are as smooth as possible. The cleaning process itself begins with the fact that polluted air is mixed with air streams, and then transported to a place with little turbulence through a large inlet surface. The purified laminar air flow exits through the opposite side. An overpressure created in the room is made for the air flow to always move towards less clean areas. So, critical work areas and equipment are less intensively contaminated.