AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Modeling and Experimental Characterization of a Large Particle Inlet (LPI)
GUAN ZHAO, Thomas Holsen, Suresh Dhaniyala, Clarkson University
Abstract Number: 267 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract A design of high flowrate large particle inlet (LPI) was introduced by Lee et al., (2008) for sampling of particles as large as 100 μm under a range of ambient wind conditions. Initial field measurements with the inlet suggested that the inlet was indeed able to sample large particles effectively in the ambient. The sampling performance of the first version of the LPI obtained from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, however, did not entirely match wind-tunnel experimental results. Reanalysis of the CFD simulation results suggested that the distribution of particles at the exit of the LPI was non-uniform and this was not initially considered in the analysis. To improve the spatial uniformity of the particles exiting the LPI, several design modifications were considered and the modified geometries were simulated for a range of flow conditions. Improved computational resources made it possible to run higher order turbulent models (Reynolds Stress Model) with high mesh density near wall (y+~1) so that particle depositions could be predicted more accurately. The sampling efficiencies calculated with the new models match reasonably well with experimental data. Details of the redesigned LPI, the numerical modeling approach, and the wind-tunnel experiments will be presented.