Abstract
Patterns of laminar flow development in the entrance region of an elliptical slit have been determined experimentally by hot‐wire anemometry. The inlet cross section is circular, tapering downstream into elliptical sections of increasing eccentricity. The cross‐sectional area is maintained constant throughout, to facilitate an assessment of wall effects on the developing flow patterns. Flow development along the major axis is found to lag the change in geometric contour, so that axisymmetric inlet profiles do not acquire the elliptical symmetry predicted by conformal mapping. Nevertheless, flow distributions are invariant in the mean: axial partial flows through downstream elliptical rings are nearly the same as on corresponding circular rings at the inlet. This near‐invariance holds approximately even for uniformly‐curved pipe sections in which intense swirl is present, and so may have more general application to conduit flows than just for the examples reported here.
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