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The purpose of this study is to reduce the conveying velocity and power consumption in gas–solid two-phase flows. Four pieces of soft fins with different (non-uniform) lengths, which are fixed on the horizontal central plane of the inlet, are employed to self-excite the gas–solid flow. A horizontal acrylic pipe, approximately 5 m long and with an inside diameter of 80 mm, is selected as the test pipeline. The test solid materials are spherical polyethylene particles with average diameter and density of 2.3 mm and 978 kg/m3, respectively. The solid mass flow rate and average gas velocity are 0.10–0.47 kg/s and 10–17 m/s, respectively. Compared with non-fin and previous uniform soft fin gas–solid flows, the minimum gas velocity, pressure drop, additional pressure drop, and power consumption are reduced when a lower gas velocity is achieved with the use of non-uniform soft fins. The highest reduction rates in power consumption and minimum velocity are approximately 5.87% and 10.04%, respectively. The particle concentration in flows with non-uniform soft fins is higher than that in the non-fin flow in the upper part of the pipe of the acceleration region and lower than those in non-fin and uniform fin flows near the pipe bottom. By employing particle image velocimetry measurement, the time-averaged axial particle velocity and fluctuating particle velocity in all non-uniform fin flows are found to be higher than those in non-fin and uniform fin flows, especially near the upper part of the pipe.

To control the vortex structures and separation region of a low-aspect-ratio cylinder wake, a passive flow control method that is to drill a horizontal hole from the front side surface to the rear side surface was proposed for a short circular cylinder having an aspect ratio H/D = 1 with height H and diameter D of 70 mm. The PIV measurements were performed at Reynolds number of 8570 in a circulation water tunnel in order to compare the flow characteristics between the controlling and no-controlling wakes. Furthermore, to study the position effect of the horizontal hole, three kinds of the hole positions having different height h from wall were tested. It was found that the jet flow from a horizontal hole leads to suppress the vortex formation and to reduce the rear separation region. The vorticity, Reynolds shear stresses and TKE were evidently suppressed by the jet flow of the horizontal hole in the rear recirculation zone, resulting in the reduction of the drag acted on the cylinder. Meanwhile, the instantaneous large-scale vortical structures of the rear recirculation zone were broken down into several small-scale vortices by the jet. As increasing the height of hole, the downwash flow is evidently suppressed and the upwash flow is increased. Spanwise vortex shedding is altered from symmetric to asymmetric arrangement.

The three-dimensional wake structures behind a barchan dune model are investigated by the high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) at the Reynolds number of 5530. The measured velocity fields are first evaluated by time-averaged flow patterns and power spectra analysis. Then the one-dimensional orthogonal wavelet analysis is applied to reveal multi-scale turbulent structures and their corresponding second order statistics in the dune wake. The instantaneous multi-scale structures suggest that the large-scale structure is responsible for the formation of separation region. The intermediate-scale structure tends to be more active at the boundary of separation region, which may be due to the secondary vortex movement caused by the interactions between the wake and main flow. The appearance of small-scale vortices at the downstream of separation region indicates the breakdown process of large-scale vortices. The Reynolds stress and kinetic energy distribution suggest that the large-scale structures dominate the generation of turbulence in the dune wake. The lower kinetic energy contained in intermediate- and small- scale structures is considered to be related to smaller-scale interactions that reflect energy cascading phenomenon. The Reynolds shear stresses distributions suggest that the intermediate-scale structures also make significance in the separated boundary layer. As for small-scale structure, it is worthy to note that a region of high Reynolds shear stresses with an opposite sign is observed around the dune crest. The cross-correlation function of multi-scale structures suggest the quasi-periodicity of large-scale structure. The intermediate-scale structures also show a certain periodicity, however, such structures tend to be more unstable and the strength of them reduces as they travel downstream. When decreasing to small-scale, the vortical structures decays quickly at the downstream with larger convective velocity. This may indicate the breakdown process of large-scale vortices and the quick dissipation of small-scale vortices.

This paper proposes an application of a rotation swirler to swirling flow pneumatic conveying for reducing the conveying velocity and pressure drop decrease. A comparison with the swirling flow pneumatic conveying generated by a non-rotation swirler and axial flow pneumatic conveying was made, the total pressure drop decrease, minimum conveying velocity, energy consumption, and additional pressure drop decrease were evaluated experimentally. In addition, the cross-section profiles of the particle velocity and particle fluctuation velocity along a pipeline near the minimum pressure drop decrease were measured by the PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) technique. The pipeline was a 5-m-long horizontal straight acrylic pipe with an inside diameter of 80 mm. Polyethylene particles of diameter of 2.3 mm were used as the conveying materials. The initial swirl number was varied from 0 to 0.66. The solid mass flow rates of 0.1, 0.28, and 0.47 kg/s were applied, and the superficial air velocity was varied from 9 to 16 m/s. It is revealed that the total pressure drop decrease and power consumption of the swirling flow using the rotation swirler exhibit the smallest values among all cases in the region of low air velocity, and are almost the same as the axial flow in the high air velocity region. The particle velocity and particle fluctuation velocity of the swirling flow originated by the rotation swirler are almost the same as the axial flow in the acceleration regime, but become larger than that of the axial flow near the bottom of the pipeline in the fully developed regime.

The effect of self-excited soft fins on a pneumatic conveying with different vertical curved 90° bends was experimentally studied to reduce pressure drop, power consumption and conveying air velocity. The distributions of particle velocity and particle fluctuating velocity near and in the first bend were measured based on the high-speed PIV. The polyethylene particles with a diameter of 2.3 mm were used as conveying materials. The superficial air velocity was varied from 10 to 14 m/s, and the stable mass flow rate was fixed at 0.45 kg/s. Compared to the non-fin pneumatic conveying, the pressure drop, the minimum pressure drop (MPD) velocity, power consumption, and additional pressure drop can be reduced by using soft fins for two bends of different radii (R/D = 3.2 and 4.4) in lower air velocity range. The maximum reduction rates of the MPD velocity and power consumption by using soft fins is about 8.2% and 8%, respectively. At the upstream of the bend, the particle velocity of the soft fins is higher than that of the non-fin. The effect of soft fins on the particle velocity and its fluctuating energy remains in the bend. The particle velocity and fluctuating energy of particle velocity of the soft fins are higher than that of the non-fin in the first vertical bend. At the downstream of the bend, the fluctuating energy of particle velocity of the soft fins is higher than that of non-fin in the large radius bendon the top part of the pipe.

This paper examines the three-dimensional (3D) wake flow structures induced by a wall-mounted short circular cylinder. The structures are controlled by the flow issuing from a horizontal hole (HH) drilled from the front to the rear of the cylinder. The 3D velocity fields are instantaneously measured at a Reynolds number of 10,720 using high-resolution tomographic particle image velocimetry (Tomo-PIV) in a water tunnel. The 3D vorticity fields, Q criterion, and characteristics of arch-type and tip vortices are compared between the HH cylinders and a standard cylinder based on the measured instantaneous 3D velocity fields. A 3D W-type arch vortex appears behind the short HH cylinders. Compared with the standard cylinder, the 3D W-type arch vortex and large-scale vortices break down more rapidly in the wake of the HH cylinders. The flow from the HH may reduce the rear recirculation region to 15%, effectively controlling the wake structures of short cylinders. A 3D wavelet multiresolution analysis is used to decompose the 3D velocity fields given by the Tomo-PIV data. The large-scale streamwise vortices in the HH cylinder wakes are smaller than those in the standard cylinder wake, and this becomes more evident as the hole height increases. The intermediate-scale vortices are also controlled by the flow issuing from the hole.

The particle velocities are measured by the high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) in the acceleration and fully developed regimes of a horizontal pneumatic conveying. Based on the measured particle fluctuation velocities, continuous wavelet transform and one-dimensional orthogonal wavelet decomposition were applied to reveal particle dynamics in terms of time frequency analysis, the contribution from wavelet level to the particle fluctuation energy, spatial correlation and probability distribution of wavelet levels. The time frequency characteristics of particle fluctuation velocity suggest that the small-scale particle motions are suppressed and tend to transfer into large scale particle motions from acceleration regime to fully developed regime. In the near bottom part of pipe, the fluctuation energy of axial particle motion is mainly contributed from the wavelet levels of relatively low frequency, however, in the near top part of pipe, wavelet levels of relatively high frequency make comparable contribution to the axial particle fluctuation energy in the suspension flow regime, and this contribution decreases as particles are accelerated along the pipe. The low frequency wavelet levels exhibit large spatial correlation, and this spatial correlation increases as the particles flow from acceleration regime to fully developed regime. The skewness factor and kurtosis factor of wavelet level suggest that the deviation of Gaussian probability distribution is associated with the central frequency of wavelet level, and the deviation from Gaussian distribution is more evident as increasing central frequency. The higher wavelet levels can be linked to small sale particle motions, which lead to irregular particle fluctuation velocity.

A high-resolution Tomographic particle image velocimetry (Tomo-PIV), which consists of four high-resolution double-exposure CCD cameras, was used to measured three-dimensional (3D) flow structures behind a wall-mounted short cylinder of an aspect ratio 1 at Reynolds number 10,720 in a water tunnel. Based on the measured instantaneous 3D velocity distribution, 3D velocity fields, the vorticity, the Q criterion, the rear separation region and the characteristic of arch type vortex and tip vortices are first discussed. In order to evaluate 3D multi-scale wake flow structures and energetic flow structures, the 3D orthogonal wavelet multi-resolution technique and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) are applied to analyze instantaneous 3D velocity fields of Tomo-PIV. A 3D W-type arch vortex behind the short cylinder is found, which is originated by the interaction between upwash and downwash flows. The head shape of arch vortex structure is associated with the aspect ratio of the cylinder. By using the 3D orthogonal wavelet multi-resolution analysis, the instantaneous arch vortex and streamwise vortices are extracted in the large-scale structures of the wavelet level 1. It also found that the intermediate-scale upwash flows play an important role in originating the head of W-type arch vortex. Strong small-scale structures appeared in the shear layer and were contained in the intermediate-scale structures. The POD analysis indicates that the first two modes account for 13.3% of the total turbulent fluctuating energy, and the first four POD modes exhibit several large-scale streamwise vortices.

To control the wake flow around a wall-mounted cube, passive control is performed by drilling a front inclined hole (FIH) from the front surface to the free end of the cube. To study the control features and mechanism, controlled and uncontrolled cubes are experimentally investigated. A circulation water tunnel is used to perform PIV measurements, where the Reynolds number is ReD = 11550 based on the cube side length of D = 70 mm, and the thickness of the boundary layer on the tunnel bottom is δ/D = 0.25. To study the effect of the hole position, three FIHs with inlet heights of 20, 35, or 50 mm are investigated. The time-averaged flow fields show that the velocity of the FIH jet increases with the FIH inlet height. Comparing with the flow structures around standard cube, it is found that the reverse zone and shear layer above free-end are obviously suppressed due to the FIH jet. In addition, the scale of the reverse zone and arch-type vortex in the near-wake is reduced by the FIH jets. Because the FIH jets disrupt the development of wake vortices, the Reynolds shear stress and turbulent kinetic energy in the near-wake decrease. The control effect is most apparent for the cube with an FIH at a spanwise height of 50 mm (the FIH50 cube). In this case the effect of the free-end downwash flow on the wake is weaker, and the shedding frequency of the wake vortices near the free-end increases. Proper orthogonal decomposition analysis indicates that the FIH50 suppresses the alternately arranged flow features and enhances the symmetrically arranged features.

A comparative study on the flow structures behind square- and wavy-square were performed to understand the wake characteristics under spanwise periodic perturbation. The high-speed PIV measurements were carried out at Reynolds number of 4075. The time-averaged flow field suggested that wavy leading edge triggered the alternative secondary vortices along the span. The instantaneous flow field indicated that the regular asymmetric vortex shedding mode was changed to symmetric mode by wavy leading edge. It was found that periodical large-scale flows were suppressed, while the motions of small-scale vortical structures were enhanced by the wavy leading edge based on the continuous wavelet transform. The modal energy distribution of the dynamic mode decomposition suggested that the wavy leading edge weakened the dominance of large-scale vortical structure and promoted the transition from large-scale to small-scale vortical structure. The spatial patterns of representative dynamic modes DM1 and DM2 in streamwise plane indicated that the wavy leading edge changed the wake flow by the distortion of Karman vortex and its corresponding secondary vortical structure, which made the vortical structures more unstable and dissipates more quickly. Furthermore, the phase averaging process based on temporal coefficients of DM1 and DM2 revealed that the separated shear layer of wavy square cylinder extended to further downstream and the separated vortex was broken into several relatively small vortices during the shedding process.

To control the wake flow around a wall-mounted cube, a passive control method is proposed by drilling a horizontal hole from the front surface to rear surfaces of the cube. The controlled and uncontrolled wakes are measured by using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The cube model has a side length of D = 70 mm, and the diameter of horizontal control hole (HCH) is d = 10 mm. Reynolds number based on side length of cube is R e D = 11,550 . Furthermore, to study the positional effect of the HCH, three kinds of holes with different heights h are used. The time-averaged statistical characteristics show that the jet generated from the HCH reduces the scale of the arch-type vortex, turbulence intensity, Reynolds shear stress and turbulent kinetic energy in the wake, and enhances the recovery of streamwise velocity. Among three HCHs, the HCH of h = 35 mm has the optimal control effectiveness. The analysis of vortex dynamics indicates that the HCH jet effectively suppresses the periodic flow structures and accelerates the wake vortex shedding. Meanwhile, the HCH jet exhibits different effect on the spanwise vortex at its different heights. The POD analysis implies that under the influence of the HCH, the alternant spanwise vortices are suppressed, but symmetric vortices are relatively enhanced.

In order to study the characters of particle fluctuation velocity at the minimum pressure drop (MPD) velocity in the acceleration and fully developed regimes of a horizontal pneumatic conveying, the particle fluctuation velocities measured by the high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) are first analyzed by time-averaged particle velocity, fluctuating energy, power spectrum and autocorrelation. Then the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and continuous wavelet transform are developed to reveal the particle fluctuation velocities in terms of the contributions to the particle fluctuation energy, time-frequency distribution, as well as probability density function from POD modes. The energy distributions of POD modes suggest that the first two POD modes are most energetic and dominate the particle motion, and the dominance increases from the acceleration regime to fully-developed regime. The time-frequency characteristics of POD modes reveal that small-scale particle fluctuations are suppressed in the fully-developed regime. It implies that the suppression of small-scale particle fluctuations may result in lower pressure drop at MPD velocity. The PDF distributions of POD modes exhibit that the particle fluctuation of first two POD modes follows the Gaussian distribution in the acceleration and fully developed regimes. However, the PDF distributions of POD modes gradually deviate from Gaussian distribution as increasing mode number.

High-speed PIV is first used to measure the fluctuating particle velocities of a horizontal self-excited pneumatic conveying at low air velocity of minimum pressure drop in the acceleration and fully-developed regimes. Then, an orthogonal wavelet multi-resolution analysis and power spectrum are employed to reveal multi-scale characteristics of particle fluctuation velocity. It is found that the pronounced peaks of the spectra of axial and vertical fluctuation velocities appear in the low frequency range near the bottom of the pipe, and the peaks of the spectra become larger by using fins. In the range of low frequencies (3–25 Hz), the wavelet components of the fluctuating energy of axial particle velocity are the main contributions, accounting for 35% and 91% for non-fin and using fins, respectively, near the bottom of the pipe. However, in the range of relatively high frequencies (50–400 Hz), the wavelet components of using fins, accounting for approximately 57%, become smaller than that of non-fin, accounting for approximately 66%, in the fully-developed regime near the top of the pipe. The auto-correlation with fins displays large quasi-periodical waves in the low frequency regime as τ increases.

To control the wake flow of a short cylinder, a passive flow control method, a front inclined hole in the cylinder was drilled from the front surface side to the free end surface. A cylinder of an aspect ratio H/D = 1 with a height H = 70 mm and a diameter D = 70 mm is used. A circulation water tunnel is used to perform PIV measurements at Reynolds number of 8,570 for comparing the flow structures between the no hole and hole wakes. In order to consider the influence of the hole position, the different cylinder models of the hole height at the front from the wall are tested. Comparing with the flow structures around standard cylinder, it is found that the separation zone near the free end surface decreases and the rear separation ron increases because of the blown flow from the inclined hole. The vorticity and Reynolds shear stresses are also suppressed in the rear recirculation zone. The instantaneous large-scale eddies in the rear separation zone are divided into several small-scale eddies as increasing the angle of the inclined hole.

The effect of using the soft fins on a horizontal pneumatic conveying of granular particles in various curved 90° bends was studied in this paper, in order to reduce pressure drop and conveying air velocity. Experimental measurements were performed in terms of the pressure drop, conveying air velocity, power consumption and additional pressure drop. The distributions of particle velocity near and in the curved 90° bend were measured by high-speed PIV. The test pipeline consisted of a 4.5 m-long horizontal straight acrylic tube, a curved 90° acrylic bend and a 1.5 m-long horizontal straight acrylic tube, having an inside diameter of 80 mm. The polyethylene particles with diameter of 2.3 mm were used as conveying materials. The superficial air velocity was varied from 10 to 14 m/s, and the solid mass flow rate was fixed at 0.45 kg/s. Comparing with the dilute phase pneumatic conveying, the pressure drop, the minimum pressure drop (MPD) velocity, power consumption and additional pressure drop can be reduced by using soft fins for various bends in lower air velocity range. The reduction becomes more evident with increasing the radius ratio of bend. The maximum reduction rates of the MPD velocity and power consumption by using soft fins is about 8.2% and 11.7%, respectively. At the upstream of bend, the particle velocity of the soft fins is evidently higher than that of the dilute phase in the bottom part of pipe for all bends. The effect of soft fins on the particle velocity and its fluctuating energy still remains in the bend and the downstream of bend, and the fluctuating energy of particle velocity gradually decreases through the bend. At the downstream of bend, the fluctuating energy of particle velocity decreases with increasing the radius ratio of bend.