Persevere Engineering Solutions Ltd.

Ian Coker was contracted by the University of Edinburgh's Department of Civil Engineering and the Built Environment (1992/3) to design, construct, test, develop and then use a device for precisely placing small radio-tags inside full-size industrial silos. This task was made difficult because a) it was not possible to access the silo; and b) it was necessary to keep the number of components to an absolute minimum to avoid the possibility that any parts could come loose and cause damage. The design brief therefore was to build a large inflatable template and to enable the placement of the radio tags into holes cut out of the surface using a "giant telescopic pea-shooter". This was successfully achieved. This involved what was basically a large "paddling pool" made of uPVC, which was built by an outside contractor. This was lowered into the silo and then, once inside, it was inflated so that the template was stretched out over the surface of the powder. The "peashooter" consisted of three aluminium tubes which telescoped out from 4m to over 10m so that the small radio tags could be inserted and then placed into the powder through the template. At the end was a trapdoor to slow the falling tags down to prevent them sinking into the powder, and a small aerial was included for checking the tag identity. This work was published in the following documents:

"Flow pattern measurements in a full scale silo" Chen, J.F., Ooi, J.Y., Rotter, J.M., Coker, I., Lauder, C., Zhang, K.F. and Dale, B.G. Proc., BSSM/SEM Int. Conf. - Advances in Engineering Measurements, Edinburgh, Aug., 58-63. 330 1994

"A Study of the Flow Patterns in an Industrial Silo" Rotter, J.M., Ooi, J.Y., Lauder, C., Coker, I., Chen, J.F., and Dale, B.G., Proc., International Symposium: Reliable Flow of Particulate Solids II, EFChE Publication Series No 96, Oslo, 23-24 August 1993, pp 517-524. 303 1993