Hydrodynamic Analysis of Pipelines Transporting Capsule for Onshore Applications

الملخص

Abstract— Rapid depletion of energy resources has
immensely affected the cargo transportation industry.
Efforts have been made to develop newer economic and
environmental friendly modes for this purpose. Bulk solids
can be transported for long distances effectively in pipelines.
Raw materials can be stored in spherical containers
(commonly known as capsules) transported through the
pipeline. For economical and efficient design of any
transportation mode, both the local flow characteristics and
the global performance parameters need to be investigated.
Published literature is severely limited in establishing the
effects of local flow features on system characteristics of
Hydraulic Capsule Pipelines (HCPs).
The present study focuses on using a well-validated
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based solver to
simulate the unsteady turbulent flow of a spherical
capsule as a simplified case in HCPs for onshore
applications. A novel numerical model has been
employed in the present study with the aid of the
dynamic mesh technique for calculating the pressure
and the velocity variations within such pipelines. The
numerical model comprises a straight test section. The
numerical model for capsule flow yields realistic
results for the global flow parameters as compared to
the experimental data from the test rig developed in
the present study. The influence of the carrying fluid
(water) on the capsule has been verified by estimating
the shear forces and the friction coefficient. In
addition, novel models have been developed for
predicting the wet friction coefficient considering the
start-up effect in such systems.