A fast region homogenization method based on experimental data for pebble flow

Abstract Particle movement in pebble bed has important applications in engineering. A fast region homogenization method based on experimental silo discharging process is proposed in this paper. It can obtain the particle information from the particle motion image, and quickly calculate the homogenization information of the region. Hough transform is applied to the image of silo unloading process in order to obtain the information of particle centroid and radius. The particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) algorithm processes two continuous images to realize particle matching. Based on the trajectories of the particle, a fast region homogenization method is developed to obtain the homogenization information of the region. By analyzing the possible relative geometric relationships between mesh elements and particles, the hash set is constructed in advance to quickly calculate the regional homogenization parameters. Compared with the traditional integral method, the calculation speed is greatly accelerated on the premise of ensuring the calculation accuracy. Finally, the particle area characteristics (average velocity and filling rate) of the near wall area and the central area of the pebble bed are compared.