Reynold's Number: Understanding Laminar Flow in Smooth Pipes

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Homework Statement


I was told that the laminar flow can be maintained at much higher Reynold 's number in very smooth pipes by avoiding flow disturbances and pipe vibrations.
the Reynold's number is the ratio of inertia forces to viscous force , in high Reynold's number of inertia force will become dominant , thus the flow is highly distributed , how can flow still be laminar ? it must be turbulent , am i right ?

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The transition from laminar to turbulent is not given precisely by a certain Reynolds number. Rather, the transition is predicted by engineering empirical guidelines. As these are empirically derived, there is room for flows to exist outside the norms encountered in the experiments used to create those guidelines.

An understanding of the factors that trip the flow to turbulent, such as pipe smoothness and vibration, means we can say that if those values are far lower than the norm then we could push the transition to a higher Reynolds flow for a given geometry. I have encountered this in practice.
 
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