New impact-based method for measuring the velocity of solid granules

A new impact-based method, which can be used to measure the real-time velocity of the granules flow, was presented in this paper. With this method, two weighting sensors were installed end to end in the designed equipment. The difference of the output signal of the two sensors which was generated by the influence of impact can be used to determine the velocity of solid granules flow. Then the mass flow rate of solid granules can also be obtained based on the measured velocity. It is found that the main factor affecting the measuring accuracy is the length of the measuring board installed above the weighting sensors. Two type of measuring boards with different length were designed to finish the comparative experiments which can reflect the influence degree of the length of the measuring board. The two type of length are respectively 3 cm and 6 cm. Some comparative experiments with soybean as the experimental material were conducted using the designed equipment. Experimental results showed that the average relative measuring accuracy of gross mass was 96.89% when 3 cm long measuring board was employed, while 6 cm long board was employed, the average accuracy was 93.25%.