Characterizing Airflow Paths in Grain Bulks
Loading...
Date
2013-04-06
Authors
Nwaizu, Charles Chioma
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Modeling of airflow resistance in grain bulk requires knowledge of the tortuosity and velocity of the air flow through the grain bulk. In this study, experiments were carried out to determine these characteristics of airflow paths by analyzing digital images of smoke-visualized airflow paths inside a grain bulk obtained with a high speed camera. Colored smoke with approximately the same density as air was introduced into the test box for the visualization of the airflow through the grain bulk. Soybeans with a moisture content of 8.82% on wet basis were used in this study. The high quality videos obtained by recoding the fast movement of the smoke through the grain bulk was first separated into frames using a commercial software, VirtualDub (CRIM, Montreal, Québec, Canada), and the 512× 384 pixel RGB image files (frames) extracted from the recorded videos and read into ImageJ an image processing Java-based software developed by the United State National institute of Health, to track the movement of the smoke in the images, frame by frame to determine lengths, tortuosities of the different flow paths, as well as their velocities.
Description
Keywords
Tortuosity, Grain bulk, Smoke, Visualization, Airflow resistance, Pore structure, Porosity, Bulk density