Capsule-Pipelining—An Improved Theoretical Analysis

Abstract

This paper provides an improvement over the earlier theoretical analysis for a rigid, frictionless, cylindrical capsule moving parallel to the horizontal pipe wall (Garg and Round [1]) by taking into account the effects of friction between the capsule and pipe surfaces and of nonuniform clearance over the capsule length. It is found that these effects markedly affect the energy requirements suggesting, thereby, an optimum operation of the capsule-pipeline system. The theoretical results are also compared with the available experimental data.