Quartz particle flow in a silo at laboratory scale

UÑAC, R.O.; BENEGAS, O.A.; VIDALES, AM; IPPOLITO, I.

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

Conferencia; XI Reunión Internacional sobre Recientes Avances en Física y Mecánica de Fluidos; 2010

An experimental study of the flow characteristics for quartz particles with two different mean size was conducted in a silo at laboratory scale. Two kind of hopper geometries were used for the cylindrical silo employed in the experiments, i.e., flat-bottomed and conical hopper. The diameter of the outlet was varied. The dependence of flow behaviors on the silo geometry was analyzed to stablish the relationship between the mean flow rate and its fluctuations as a function of the outlet size. Beverloo equation is verified in all cases studied. The results show the dependence of the Beverloo parameters on the silo geometry and on particle size. An interesting behavior is found when a Fourier analysis of flow rate fluctuations is performed against outlet size. There is a characteristic frequency which varies with the outlet diameter and is virtually independent of the hopper geometry.