Abstract

This study proves the effectiveness of air-aided transport in reducing pipeline resistance and lengthening transport distance. The adopted experimental apparatus is unique in its chosen pipes (120 mm), transmission mediums (including clean water and slurries concentrated at 10, 20 and 30%, respectively) and experiment comparisons between air-aided transport and traditional relay pump transport. Factors such as resistance, transport distance and energy consumption are compared through the data from laboratory experiments, thus proving the evident advantages from air-aided transport. The total energy consumption in air-aided transport is less than that of relay pump, especially within its resistance reducing scope, where slurry flow ranges from 65m³/h to 90 m³/h. It also exists within resistance reducing scope where slurry flow of air-aided transport is less than that of relay pump transport and may reach its limited effective distance. Thus, the findings of this study can provide valuable insight for the optimization design of air-aided transport of cutter-suction dredger.

Keywords:

Air-aided transport, dredger pipeline, energy consumption, relay pump transport,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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The authors have no competing interests.