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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:MWU.1993/18491 |
| Date | 06 April 2013 |
| Creators | Nwaizu, Charles Chioma |
| Contributors | Qiang, Zhang (Biosystems Engineering), Ramanathan, Sri Ranjan (Biosystems Engineering) Wole, Akinremi (Soil Science) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Detected Language | English |
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