Abstract:Cotton fiber length is one of the key indicators in cotton quality testing. To ensure that cotton fibers remain stable and straight during testing, the airflow field inside a self-designed cotton fiber suction port was numerically simulated and optimized using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and orthogonal experiments. Single-factor experiments were conducted to study the effects of suction port length, width, and height on the uniformity of the flow field, airflow velocity, and pressure within the cavity. The suction port parameters were optimized through numerical simulation and orthogonal experiments. Single-factor test results indicated that the optimal range for height was 2.6~3.0 mm, width was 40~60 mm, and length was 65~105 mm. Through orthogonal optimization experiments, using the weighted score of velocity and pressure non-uniformity coefficients as evaluation criteria, the factors affecting the airflow field distribution inside the suction port were analyzed. The results showed that the main factors affecting flow field uniformity in order were the length, height and width of the suction port. The optimized suction port structural parameters were as follows: height was 2.8 mm, width was 50 mm, and length was 85 mm. Under this configuration, the velocity non-uniformity coefficients at sections A, B, and C were decreased by 0.30, 0.33 and 0.31 compared with the average test values, and the pressure non-uniformity coefficients were decreased by 0.13, 0.21 and 0.21, respectively. The comprehensive weighted scores for velocity and pressure reached a maximum of 99.979 3 and 99.688 9, respectively. Verification through comparison of pixel counts in 35 groups of cotton sample images by row showed that the optimal parameter configuration had coverage rates of 86.44%, 46.77% and 10.61% in three row intervals (each image divided into three groups by rows), demonstrating the best fiber straightness, which was consistent with the numerical simulation results. The research result can provide a reference for evaluating the airflow distribution in cotton fiber suction ports and lay a foundation for accurate cotton fiber length detection.