Greetings Programs,

Has anyone here used Caesar II to analyze pneumatic conveying pipe? I am looking at a project right now for this and wondering what kinds of problems I could run into. Overall the system seems pretty basic with nothing unusual from a regular pipe system except for the 8' radius elbows (which I believe CAESAR II can handle.) They also want me to use slip style expansion joints, so that should help with controlling the stress in the elbows.

My only other concern is the dynamic effects of the pneumatically conveyed material. I have heard rumors about having to look at elbow forces from the flow, plugged flow packets, and excessive erosion in the pipe. For the most part I would expect those to be little different from how we handle water hammer in a static pipe analysis (i.e. we generally don't.) Erosion issues can be dealt with using larger corrosion values I expect.

So anyone with some experience care to share their thoughts with me?

Thanks,

Hi Duncan,
First you should know what is being conveyed. Is it powder or pellets?
Is it dense phase or lean phase?
Normally in lean phase slugging / plugging is not expected but at some elbows you can have slug / plug force due to accumulation of matter being conveyed.
In dense phase you have to take care of slug/plug force on each elbow. These lines are subjected to vibration also. So maintain good natural frequency of the system.
Hope this will help you.
Regards,