To verify my CFD model of a sugar beet clamp, measurements of air speed inside of the clamp are desired. It’s something that I have not been able to do with a simple, post-clamp-construction method. In 2021, it is time to test a more embedded, set-up-at-harvest method. To this end, I’ve turned to do-it-yourself electronics.…
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In 2003, Lope G. Tabil and three co-authors decided that they would make my 2021 life much much easier by publishing the paper Airflow Resistance of Sugarbeet. This paper reports some very useful values for the fluid dynamic properties of piles of sugar beets. I’m not sure where they saw their work going, but my…
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Just a quick reminder 1st attempt: flow over a structure the shape of a clamp 2nd attempt: flow through a porous clamp This attempt: flow through a porous clamp with a less porous cover added The cover is 5cm normal to the surface. At a ca. 34 degree angle of repose, this makes the cover…
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After getting familiar with OpenFOAM by building a model of airflow around a clamp, it was time to start looking in the clamp. To be honest, I’ve been waiting 2.5 years for this moment, so I was pretty keen to get a model that worked, regardless of whether it has the right parameters or not.…
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The love-hate relationship builds. The things I’m loving about OpenFOAM so far include: the price, the way it makes you understand what everything (every step, every parameter, every decision) is and means – the learning is much deeper, the way it make you understand that you’re asking the computer to do a lot of computations!…
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Drying out sugar beets isn’t usually a practice undertaken in their production – at least, not intentionally – and we’re not looking to change this – intentionally. The topic has come up after it became clear in one of my other projects that ventilation isn’t just good for cooling beets, it has the ability to…
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COBRI is the COordination Beet Research International. How International? There are four institutes, representing five sugar beet growing nations: IRS from the Netherlands, IRBAB from Belgium, IfZ from Germany, and, of course, NBR from Sweden and Denmark. These institutes work together through the collaboration on projects that have agro-ecological/ management/ policy/ etc relevance in the…
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Yes, I do amuse myself… But seriously, this has been a fun set of experiments. Damage to sugar beets during harvest and transport can be very costly in terms of sugar loss during storage. This general idea is something that seems to be pretty well understood. The depth of knowledge on the different conditions that…
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If there is one thing that I hope to know more about than anyone else in the world at the end of my PhD, it is how air moves through sugar beet clamps, and how this air movement impacts the quality of the beets over time. To this end, one of the major research trials…
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In May this year (2019), the IIRB Beet Quality and Storage study group had their latest meeting. The first speaker was from KWS in Germany – Elka Hilscher – and talked about the distribution of the good and the bad within sugar beets. I’ve written a summary of this work for Betordlaren (coming soon). If…
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