Flow through porous media of packed spheres saturated with water

Journal Article · Mon Feb 28 23:00:00 EST 1994 · Journal of Fluids Engineering; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2910229· OSTI ID:7113838

Kececioglu, I; Jiang, Y ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, IL (United States). Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

The existing literature on the flow of fluids through porous packed beds gives very limited quantitative information of the criteria employed in marking the applicability of the different flow regimes. It is the objective of this paper to provide experimental evidence for determining the demarcation criteria during the flow of water through a bed of randomly packed spherical beads. Two different sizes of glass beads, 3 mm and 6 mm, were employed as the porous matrix through which water flowed at rates varying from 5.07 [times] 10[sup [minus]6] m[sup 3]/s to 4,920 [times] 10[sup [minus]6] m[sup 3]/s. The dimensionless pressure drop data showed less variation when the characteristic length of the porous medium was taken to be proportional to the square root of the permeability over the porosity and not the bead diameter. Curves of properly nondimensionalized pressure drop plotted against the actual flow Reynolds number based on the porous medium permeability provided the following information. It was found that Darcy's law has very limited applicability and is valid for a small range of Reynolds numbers. This leads to a pre-Darcy flow that is valid for a much broader range of Reynolds numbers than expected. Alternatively, the range of validity of the post-Darcy laminar Forchheimer flow is also found to be of much more limited applicability than previous studies have indicated. Transition to turbulence takes place earlier than expected and turbulent flow prevails from then on. The dimensionless pressure drop in both the Forchheimer and turbulent flow regimes can be modeled by an appropriately nondimensionalized Ergun's equation i.e., a first-order inertia term correction is sufficient in both flow regimes.

• OSTI ID: 7113838
• Journal Information: Journal of Fluids Engineering; (United States), Journal Name: Journal of Fluids Engineering; (United States) Vol. 116:1; ISSN JFEGA4; ISSN 0098-2202
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
420400* -- Engineering-- Heat Transfer & Fluid Flow
DATA
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FLUID FLOW
INFORMATION
MATERIALS
NUMERICAL DATA
PACKED BEDS
POROUS MATERIALS
PRESSURE DROP
SATURATION
WATER SATURATION