AIR-FLOW THROUGH BEDS OF CEREAL-GRAINS

The equations used to model the flow of air through beds of cereal gra ins become nonlinear when the resistance to flow is a function of the velocity of the air. An analytic solution to this problem is obtained for the case where the flow is predominantly in one direction. The pro blem is defined in terms of a parameter epsilon which for typical cere al grains has values in the range 0.02-1.0. A perturbation expansion i n terms of epsilon is used to obtain a weakly nonlinear solution to th e flow problem. The solution is valid for small epsilon and this corre sponds to small grains and low air velocity. The solution is used to s tudy the effect of the nonlinearity on the flow pattern. A numerical m ethod is used to extend the solution to larger values of epsilon, and this confirms the general effect of the nonlinear term on the airflow pattern which was determined by the analytic solution.