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Moody friction factor will be used as another input for the D’arcy-Weisbech equation which is used for calculating the final pressure drop of the piping system design calculation example. The Moody’s factor can either be calculated by using Colebrook equation or by using Moody diagram. We will use the diagram for finding out the friction factor value for our water pipe sizing calculation example problem.

Image Source: Wiki

How to Read the Moody Diagram

1. Find out the curve most closely matching with your relative roughness value.

For our example problem, we already found out the value of the relative roughness in Part-5 as 0.0075. So I will use the 6^th curve (0.01) from the top.

1. Find out the intersection point of the relative roughness curve and the calculated Reynolds number.

For our example problem, we already calculated the value of the Reynolds number in Part-6 as 35592.84. I have marked the approximated intersection point for our example by red dot in the above Moody chart.

1. Draw a horizontal line from the intersection point towards the friction factor axis to find out the approximate friction factor value. Adjust the friction factor value according to the difference between the actual relative roughness value and the relative roughness curve you have selected initially.

For our example, the approximate Moody friction factor value is coming around 0.04. And after adjusting the final friction factor comes to 0.035.

In the next part (Part-8) of this piping sizing calculation tutorial we will use the D’arcy-Weisbech equation to find out the final pressure drop.

Shibashis Ghosh

Hi, I am Shibashis, a blogger by passion and an engineer by profession. I have written most of the articles for mechGuru.com. For more than a decades i am closely associated with the engineering design/manufacturing simulation technologies. I am a self taught code hobbyist, presently in love with Python (Open CV / ML / Data Science /AWS -3000+ lines, 400+ hrs. )