Determining the characteristics of pipe flow and the effect of friction resistance is relevant to a variety of applications in hydraulic and hydrological engineering such as flood control, river restoration and ground runoff prediction. In the Nikuradse’s experiments, the relative roughness and the bulk Reynolds number are used to scale the Darcy friction factor thereby determining the mean velocity. Recent observations using permeable-walled pipes however indicate that the friction factor can significantly deviate from the results obtained in Nikuradse’s approach. Here, we propose a concise model to estimate the mean velocity of the pipe flow over permeable walls. The model is formulated using a data-driven approach based on the analytical solution of the mean velocity and the similarity analysis (dimension conservation) of the two extreme cases: impermeable and porous pipe flow. We show that the proposed …