Abstract
This paper describes numerical and experimental investigations on the motion of pulverised wood particles in turbulent flows. The pulverised wood particles used in the study are highly anisotropic and typically of non-spherical shapes, with size varying between 125-1400μm in diameter and 200-6000μm in length. Several numerical models of particle dynamics for both spherical and non-spherical shapes are presented and validated against experimental data. The experiments are carried out for four types of wood powders with different shape and size. Three different techniques are used during the experiments: vibrating sieve, microscopic image and aerodynamic classifier “Aeroklass”. Some discrepancies between measurements and the model simulations of non-spherical particles are observed, which motivates further improvement on the models. Influences of different factors such as, particle shape and anisotropy, on the pulverised wood dynamics are studied. The orientation of the non-spherical particles in turbulent flow is investigated as well. Based on the numerical and experimental results, a comprehensive new sphericity correlation is proposed for the non-spherical particles.