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Experimental investigation of critical suction velocity of coarse solid particles in hydraulic collecting

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Abstract

Hydraulic collecting and pipe transportation are regarded as an efficient way for exploiting submarine mineral resources such as the manganese nodules and ores. Coarse particles on the surface of the sea bed are sucked by a pipe during the mining and crushing of the mineral. In this paper, the critical suction velocity for lifting the coarse particles is investigated through a series of laboratory experiments, and the solid–liquid two-phase flow characteristics are obtained. Based on the dimensional analysis, the geometric similarity is found between actual exploitation process and model test with the same kind of material. The controlling dimensionless parameters such as the hydraulic collecting number, the relative coarse particle diameter, the relative suction height, and the density ratio are deduced and discussed. The results show that the logarithm in base 10 of the hydraulic collecting number increases approximately linearly with the increase of the relative suction height, while decreases with the relative particle diameter. A fitting formula for predicting the critical suction velocity is presented according to the experimental results.

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Acknowledgements

The authors of this paper would like to thank the financial supports provided by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA22000000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Yan Zhang, Xiaobing Lu & Xuhui Zhang

  2. School of Engineering Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yan Zhang, Xiaobing Lu, Xuhui Zhang & Lianghua Zhang

  3. Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, 572000, China

    Yuxiang Chen & Hong Xiong

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  1. Yan Zhang
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  2. Xiaobing Lu
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  3. Xuhui Zhang
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  4. Yuxiang Chen
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  5. Hong Xiong
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  6. Lianghua Zhang
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Correspondence to Xuhui Zhang.

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Zhang, Y., Lu, X., Zhang, X. et al. Experimental investigation of critical suction velocity of coarse solid particles in hydraulic collecting. Acta Mech. Sin. 37, 613–619 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-020-01022-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-020-01022-6

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