In order to reveal the mechanism of the steady transport at the low conveying velocity by using soft fins, the high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) is used to measure and analyze particle fluctuation velocity near air conveying velocity of the minimum pressure drop (MPD) in a horizontal self-excited pneumatic conveying. The study focuses on the effect of the different fin's lengths on the horizontal pneumatic conveying in terms of the time-averaged particle concentration and velocity, power spectrum, auto-correlation coefficients, two-point correlation coefficients, fluctuation intensity of particle velocity, skewness factor and probability density function. It is found that the power spectra peaks of fins, especially the longer fins, are larger than that of non-fin even at lower air velocity, suggesting the accelerating efficiency of fins' vibration. Meanwhile, the profiles of particle fluctuation velocity intensity indicate that the fins' oscillation generates large particle fluctuating energy even at lower air velocity so that the particles are more easily accelerated and suspended. This is one of the important reasons why the fins' oscillation results in the low pressure drop and low MPD air velocity. From the distribution of the skewness factor and the probability density function, it is found that the particle fluctuation velocities of all cases follow the Gaussian distribution in the lower and middle parts of pipe, and departure from the Gaussian distribution in the upper part of the pipe. The particle fluctuation velocity of the most efficient Fin320 more obeys the Gaussian-type fluctuation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.