Experimental Measurement on Pebble Flow Discharge in a Hopper Silo Based on a Drainage Method

The dropping of absorption sphere from the storage vessel under accident conditions and the transportation of spent fuel elements in the reactor will both lead to the pebble flow discharging process driven by gravity in a hopper silo. Therefore, the research on the gravity-driven discharging rate of pebbles in a hopper silo has significant engineering guidance for reactor safety. In general, the idea of falling pebbles weighing to obtain the discharging rate becomes the most common experimental measurement method. However, due to the limitation of response frequency and the disturbance of pebbles falling, the resolution of experimental results is limited, and the uncertainty is introduced into the data error, which is difficult to eliminate. In this experiment, a volume measurement based on drainage method is adopted. This is a new experimental method to measure the discharge process of hopper silo. The magnetostrictive liquid level sensor is applied to measure the rise of liquid level caused by the volume of falling pebbles. Compared with the weighing method, this method has two advantages. First, the resolution of this method has a higher controllability. On the one hand, the disturbance caused by the momentum of falling pebbles will not be introduced into this method, on the other hand, the measurement accuracy is determined by the multiple controllable factors. Second, this method can obtain higher measurement frequency. the sampling frequency of liquid level sensor is 1–2 orders of magnitude higher than that of electronictong balance. Based on this new experimental method, the reliability of the method is validated by comparing the experimental results of discharge flow rate with the Beverloo’s and Nedderman’s empirical formula. Furthermore, the effect of silo outlet size on pebble discharge flow rate fluctuation have been also analyzed in this study. By use of fast Fourier transform, the fluctuation of particle discharge flow rate is separated from the discharging sampling results of liquid level sensor. © Copyright © 2021 Liu, Peng, Gui, Yang, Tu and Jiang.