THE CALCULATION OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A CHAOTIC ATTRACTOR IN A GAS-SOLID FLUIDIZED-BED

This paper presents an application of ''chaos'' or ''deterministic cha os'' analysis to the performance of a gas-solid fluidized bed. From th e point of view of the still developing field of chaos the significanc e of this analysis is the constancy of the correlation dimension and t he Lyapunov exponent over a range of operating conditions. From the po int of view of fluidized bed theory these quantitative numbers provide a method of characterizing performance. In addition, in the latter ca se, the presence of the chaotic attractor indicates several general pr operties of this dynamical system.