Analysis of particle dynamics in a horizontal pneumatic conveying of the minimum pressure drop based on POD and wavelet transform

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.