The experimental investigation described in this thesis is primarily aimed at acquiring digital particle-tracking velocimetry (DPTV) measurements of a free-surface granular flow down the upper inclined surface of a wedge-shaped static pile of the same material, contained in a narrow channel between two parallel vertical glass plates. The glass plates are 610 mm long and 350 mm high. Three different values of the normal separation distance between them were investigated: 25.4 mm, 38.1 mm, and 50.8 mm. For each of these separation distances, the following three values (nominal) of the mass flow rate per unit width were considered: 0.81 kg/s-m, 1.85 kg/s-m, and 3.33 kg/s-m. The granular material used in this work consists of slightly polydisperse, almost spherical, ceramic (zirconium silicate) beads: mean effective diameter of 1.59 mm and mass density of 4071 kg/m3. For these ranges of dimensional parameters, statistically-steady fully developed flows were established in a reliable and repeatable manner. A high-speed camera system was used to acquire digital images of the granular flows of interest in the fully developed region. Image processing and a commercial PTV software package (DiaTrackPro 2.3) were used to obtain the particle trajectories. Special routines were written in Matlab to obtain the corresponding instantaneous and ensemble-averaged velocity distributions. These results were then used to compute the corresponding distributions of granular temperature and a related dimensionless parameter that is commonly referred to as the Savage-Jeffrey parameter. The aforementioned PTV and data processing procedures, the results in dimensional and dimensionless forms, and the applicability of some recently proposed scaling laws are discussed in this thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.83869 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Jesuthasan, Nirmalakanth |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Engineering (Department of Mechanical Engineering.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002268905, proquestno: AAIMR22650, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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