Particuology 7 (2009) 264–268

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Particuology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/partic

Experimental study of sedimentation characteristics of spheroidal particles

Jinsheng Wang, Haiying Qi ∗ , Changfu You
Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The drag of non-spherical particles is a basic, important parameter for multi-phase flow. As the first step
Received 4 November 2008 in research in this area, the terminal velocities, Ut , of hemispherical and spherical segment particles with
Accepted 18 March 2009 maximal diameters of 6–21 mm were measured in static fluids by using a high-speed video camera. The
drag coefficient, CD , measured for Reynolds number, Re of 101 –105 , has been obtained and compared with
Keywords: those for a sphere. The Re based on the terminal velocity has a logarithmic linear relationship with Ar
Spheroidal particles
number for both the facet facing upwards or downwards for the two experimental spheroidal particles, and
Terminal velocity
their CD values are greater than those of spheres. A shape function that depends on the initial orientation
Drag coefficient
Shape function
of the particle facet is presented to correct for the shape effects.
© 2009 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of
Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction although no correlation was proposed. Sphericity, , is generally

recognized as an appropriate dimensionless number related to dv
One type of multi-phase flow includes non-spherical particles for characterizing the shape of non-spherical particles (Haider &
moving with the fluid. The settling characteristics, common to all Levenspiel, 1989; Hartman, Trnka, & Svoboda, 1994; Pettyjohn &
particle flows, are foundations for understanding the interaction Christiansen, 1948).
between these particles and the fluid. There are currently two methods for dealing with non-spherical
Settling behavior of spherical particles has been well researched, particles. One is to develop drag expressions for particles of
culminating in a relationship between drag coefficient and fixed shapes, as empirical correlations, including spheroidal par-
Reynolds number (Hartman & Yates, 1993). Non-spherical parti- ticles by Militzer, Kan, Hamdullahpur, Amyotte, and Al-Taweel
cles are common in nature and in industrial processes such as oil (1989), and Tripathi, Chhabra, and Sundararajan (1994), cylinders
drilling, sedimentation of pollutants, pneumatic transport and dry by Marchildon, Clamen, and Gauvin (1964), and Zhu, Lin, and
flue gas desulfurization. Settling characteristics for these particles, Shao (2000), parallelepipeds by Heiss and Coull (1952), cones by
different from those of spherical particles, are needed for under- Jayaweera and Mason (1965), and fibers by Fan, Yang, Yu, and Mao
standing these processes. (2003). However, though these studies give good accuracy for the
The terminal velocity and drag coefficient of a particle depend selected shapes and orientations, they are not suitable for other
strongly on its size, shape and orientation during sedimentation, shapes or orientations.
in addition to its surrounding fluid medium. Among the many The other approach is to propose a robust correlation for all
studies on the drag of non-spherical particles, Wadell proposed in shapes and orientations of non-spherical particles, relying on a
1934 the concept of particle sphericity, , to describe non-spherical large amount of experiment data, such as the following correla-
particles, defined as the ratio of the surface area of an equivalent- tion developed by Haider and Levenspiel (1989) for spherical and
volume-sphere to the actual surface area of the particle, A (Wadell, non-spherical particles based on more than 500 data points:
1934):
24 K3
CD = (1 + K2 ReK1 ) + ,
dv2 Re 1 + (K4 /Re)  
 = , (1)
A 
3
i
K1 = 0.0964 + 0.5565 , Kj = exp ai , (j = 2, 3, 4).
where dv is the diameter of the equivalent-volume-sphere. Wadell,
in his milestone work, presented a chart relating CD , Re and , i=0
(2)

The values of ai are given in Table 1.

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 62796036; fax: +86 10 62796036. Although the above expression greatly improved predictions of
E-mail address: hyqi@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (H. Qi). particle sedimentation, it could not be applied in practice because

1674-2001/$ – see front matter © 2009 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.partic.2009.03.008
 J. Wang et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 264–268 265

Table 2
Nomenclature Particle parameters in size and shape.

Hemispheres
sphericity dp,max (mm) 6 9 12 15 18 21
dv equivalent-volume-sphere diameter (m)
Spherical segments (dp,max = 18 mm)
dp,max maximum particle diameter (m) h/dp,max 0.5 0.583 0.67 0.75 0.833 0.92
h particle height (m)
p particle density (kg/m3 )
 fluid density (kg/m3 ) These studies show that research on sedimentation of non-
 fluid dynamic viscosity (Pa s) spherical particles needs a large number of data points as a function
 fluid kinetic viscosity (m2 /s) of particle geometry. This paper supplies a large amount of exper-
Ut terminal velocity (m/s) imental data for the two shapes, hemispheres and other spherical
CD drag coefficient segments. The reasons for choosing these two types of particles
are: first, these two types are regular and thus easier for analy-
sis; second, these two types are developed from the sphere and
Table 1 could therefore be described in terms of existing results for the
Values of ai . sphere. The primary objective of this paper is to propose a reliable
correlation to predict the terminal velocity and drag coefficient of
a0 a1 a2 a3
hemispherical particles and spherical segments. This study may
K2 2.3288 −6.458 2.4486 0.0
serve as a prelude to additional studies on non-spherical parti-
K3 4.905 −13.8944 18.42222 −10.2599
K4 1.4681 12.2584 −20.7322 15.8855 cles.

2. Experimental program and data reduction

of low accuracy. Ganser (1993), Swamee and Ojha (1991), Chhabra,
Agarwal, and Sinha (1999), Hartman et al. (1994) as well as Chien
(1994) and others studied the drag coefficients for various shapes,
though they all have the same disadvantage that the correlations
are only good for a few shapes, but are not accurate for other shapes.
2.1. Experiments
The experiments used a rectangular parallelepiped test sec-
tion 1200 mm × 150 mm × 135 mm and two types of spheroidal

Fig. 1. Sedimentation test section and particles used in the experiments. (a) Sphere segments and (b) hemispheres.
266 J. Wang et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 264–268

Table 3
Fluid parameters.

Fluid 1 Fluid 2 Fluid 3

−3
Dynamic viscosity,  (×10 Pa s) 0.722 3.784 13.54
Density,  (kg/m3 ) 1002 1009 1012
Kinetic viscosity,  (10−6 m2 /s) 0.721 3.750 13.38

Table 4
Particle shapes and initial facet orientation.

Case Particle shape Initial facet orientation

1 Hemisphere
Upwards
2 Spherical segment

3 Hemisphere
Downwards
4 Spherical segment

The required terminal state for the particles during experiments

Fig. 2. Definition of h and dp,max .
particles, hemispheres and spherical segments, with a density of
p = 1557 kg/m3 , as shown in Fig. 1.
The particles were characterized by the maximum diameter,
dp,max , of both the hemispheres and spherical segments, and the
height, h, of the spherical segments as shown in Fig. 2 and listed in
Table 2.
Three liquids used as sedimentation fluids with their parameters
are listed in Table 3.
was either for the plane facet facing upwards or downwards, thus
excluding the initial direction of the plane facet facing sideways.
Experiments were thus divided into four cases according to the ini-
tial particle orientations as shown in Table 4. Experimental results
represent the averages of measurements repeated several times to
ensure accuracy.
2.2. Terminal particle velocities
Terminal velocity, Ut , was calculated with the distance and the
time particles passing this distance while the sedimentation was
steady-state. This time could be measured by the high-speed video

Fig. 3. Relationship between terminal velocity and particle size in different fluids. (a) Case 1; (b) case 3; (c) case 2; (d) case 4.
 J. Wang et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 264–268 267

Fig. 4. Relationship between Ut and initial state of settlement.

camera with its sampling frequency and the amount of sampling

data. Fig. 3 shows the general relationship between terminal veloc-
ity, Ut , and particle size. In general, large particles had larger Ut . For
cases 1 and 2, Ut decreased with increasing kinetic viscosity  due
to increasing viscous drag. However, for cases 3 and 4, settling was
unstable with swinging of the particles which led to local turbu-
lence around the particles, thus diminishing the effect of viscous
drag, that is,  had less influence on Ut than for cases 1 and 2.
Fig. 4 shows that the terminal velocity, Ut , when the facet faced
upwards (cases 1 and 2), was larger than when the facet faced
downwards (cases 3 and 4), because the pressure drag is smaller
when the facet faces upwards, that is, the terminal velocity of
non-spherical particles was significantly influenced by the initial
orientation of the particles in addition to particle size.
In this study, Ut is assumed to be related to only Ar and Ret
(Wang & Wang, 1996), where Ar is related to the particle and fluid
characteristics:
Fig. 5. Relationship between Ret and Ar for the 4 cases.
2 g( − )
dV p
Ar = , (3)
2
particles. Least-square analysis of the data gives:
and the terminal Reynolds number, Ret , is given by:
Ar0.569
log(Ret ) = 0.569 log(Ar) − 0.416 or Ret = . (5)
dv Ut 2.606
Ret = , (4)
 The terminal velocity, Ut , can then be given by:

where  is the density of the fluid and  is the dynamic viscosity
of the fluid.
Even though terminal velocities differ greatly, a linear logarith-
mic relationship exists between Ret and Ar as illustrated in Fig. 5.
This linear relationship for both particle shapes can be used to esti-
mate the terminal velocity for any initial state for the two shaped
Ar0.569
Ut = . (6)
2.606dv
And Ut for hemispherical and spherical segment particles can there-
fore be predicted within the experimental range of Ar and Ret .
Suitability for extended scope yet calls for further verification.

Fig. 6. Comparison of CD for spherical and hemispherical particles.

268 J. Wang et al. / Particuology 7 (2009) 264–268

Table 5
Values of Ki for hemispherical and spherical segment particles.

K1 K2 K3

Facet facing upwards 0.01 1.07 8.54

Facet facing downwards 0.26 0.77 −6.98

Thus, Eqs. (8) and (9) can be used to represent the drag coeffi-
cient for these two shapes of spheroidal particles for Re from 101 to
105 .

3. Conclusions

The sedimentation characteristics of two shapes of spheroidal

particles were investigated experimentally. The results show that:

(1) The initial facet orientation for the non-spherical particles has
a large effect on drag.
(2) For all the four cases listed in Table 4, the Reynolds number
based on terminal velocity and Ar are related by a linear loga-
rithmic correlation. The initial orientation of the particle facet
has no influence on this relationship.
(3) A shape function f(Ret ) for both types of spheroidal particles
was developed for Ret of 101 –105 with different coefficients
depending on initial facet orientation.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Major Program of the National

Natural Science Foundation of China with Grant No. 10632070.

References

Chhabra, R. P., Agarwal, L., & Sinha, N. K. (1999). Drag on non-spherical particles: an
evaluation of available methods. Powder Technology, 101, 288–295.
Chien, S. F. (1994). Settling velocity of irregularly shaped particles. SPE Drilling and
Fig. 7. Shape function, f(Ret ), for hemispheres and spherical segments. (a) Facet Completion, 9(4), 281–289.
upwards and (b) facet downwards. Fan, L., Yang, C., Yu, G. Z., & Mao, Z. S. (2003). Empirical correlation of drag coefficient
for settling slender particles with large aspect ratio. Journal of Chemical Industry
and Engineering (China), 54(10), 1501–1503 (in Chinese).
2.3. Drag coefficient
Ganser, G. H. (1993). A rational approach to drag prediction of spherical and non-
spherical particles. Powder Technology, 77(2), 143–152.
Fig. 6 compares the drag coefficient CD for spherical and hemi- Haider, A. M., & Levenspiel, O. (1989). Drag coefficient and terminal velocity of
spherical and nonspherical particles. Powder Technology, 58, 63–70.
spherical particles, the solid line being the standard curve for CD for
Hartman, M., Trnka, O., & Svoboda, K. (1994). Free settling of non-spherical particles.
spheres (Turton & Levenspiel, 1986). The overall trend for CD of the Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 33(8), 1979–1983.
hemispherical particles is consistent with that of spheres, though Hartman, M., & Yates, J. G. (1993). Free-fall of solid particles through fluids. Collection
slightly higher. Thus, a correlation for CD for the experimental data of Czechoslovak Chemical Communications, 58(5), 961–982.
Heiss, J. F., & Coull, J. (1952). The effect of orientation and shape on the settling
can be obtained by modifying that for spheres. velocity of non-isometric particles in a viscous medium. Chemical Engineering
The correlation for CD derived by Stokes for spheres at low Re Progress, 48(3), 133–140.
from Navier–Stokes equations is: Jayaweera, K. O. L. F., & Mason, B. J. (1965). The behavior of freely falling cylinders and
cones in viscous fluid. Journal of Fluid Mechanics Digital Archive, 22(4), 709–720.
24 Marchildon, E. K., Clamen, A., & Gauvin, W. H. (1964). Drag and oscillatory motion of
CD = . (7) freely falling cylindrical particles. Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, 42,
Ret
178–182.
For non-spherical particles, Eq. (7) can be corrected by a shape Militzer, J., Kan, J. M., Hamdullahpur, F., Amyotte, P. R., & Al-Taweel, A. M. (1989).
Drag coefficient for axisymmetric flow around individual spheroidal particles.
factor as a function of Ret :
Powder Technology, 57, 193–195.
24 Pettyjohn, E. S., & Christiansen, E. B. (1948). Effect of particle shape on free-settling
CD = f (Ret ). (8) rates of isometric particles. Chemical Engineering Progress, 44, 157–172.
Ret Swamee, P. K., & Ojha, C. P. (1991). Drag coefficient and fall velocity of non-spherical
particles. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 117, 660–667.
The measured data then yield the curves for the shape function
Tripathi, A., Chhabra, R. P., & Sundararajan, T. (1994). Power law fluid flow over
f(Ret ) as shown in Fig. 7. The curves are very similar with very spheroidal particles. Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, 33, 403–410.
little effect of the shape, but a strong dependence on the initial Turton, R., & Levenspiel, O. (1986). A short note on the drag correlation for spheres.
orientation of the facet. Powder Technology, 47(11), 83–86.
Wadell, H. (1934). The coefficient of resistance as a function of Reynolds number for
The relationship between the shape function and Ret can be solids of various shapes. Journal of the Franklin Institute, 217, 459–490.
given by: Wang, B. H., & Wang, X. Z. (1996). New method for calculation of settling velocity of
a spheroidal particle. Powder Science and Technology, 2(2), 30–39 (in Chinese).
f (Ret ) = K1 [exp(Ret )]K2 + K3 , (9) Zhu, Z. F., Lin, J. Z., & Shao, X. M. (2000). An experimental study of the force and torque
on cylindrical particle in simple fluid. Journal of Zhejiang Institute of Science and
where the coefficients Ki , as listed in Table 5, depend on the initial Technology, 2, 116–119 (in Chinese).
orientation of the particle facet.