ARTICLE:

• AN EXPERIMENTAL, NUMERICAL, AND CFD INVESTIGATION INTO THE HEAT TRANSFER AND FLOW CHARACTERISTICS IN POROUS MEDIA USING A THERMAL NON-EQUILIBRIUM MODEL  download article

A. M. Hayes
Applied Research Associates, Inc., Panama City, USA; and University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

A. H. Shaaban
Applied Research Associates, Inc., Panama City, USA

Jamil A. Khan
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Laboratory for Applied Heat Transfer, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina USA

I. G. Spearing
Liebert Corporation, Columbus, USA

R. Salavini
Air Force Research Laboratory

ABSTRACT

Heat transfer and fluid flow through porous media was investigated using numerical simulations and experiment. For the numerical simulations, two models were created. The first consisted of a two-dimensional numerical model created in MathCAD and was solved using the finite difference approach. The MathCAD model's flow in the porous media was described by the Brinkman-Forchheimer-extended Darcy equation. The second model consisted of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) porous media model using Fluent™ and was solved using the finite volume approach. Both models assumed constant fluid phase and properties. Pore diameters were held constant for each simulation; two different porosities were investigated. Boundary conditions were applied at the wall in which the temperatures of the fluid and the porous media were determined by coupled energy equations. The effects of the boundary condition, the Reynolds number, porosity, and heat input were examined.
The experimental investigation consisted of a flow channel with a porous media section that was heated from below by a heat source. The variation of temperature of the fluid in the porous media was measured along the centerline and along the top wall and bottom wall. The heat source temperature and the fluid's inlet and outlet temperatures were also measured. The results of the numerical and CFD models as compared to the experimental data for fluid flow through porous media are presented in the paper.

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