Analysis of Darcy Flow in Confined Porous Media Including Wall Effect

Abstract

Effective cooling lies at the heart of reactor design and safe operation. Materials for cooling systems include solid porous media (e.g. metal foam). This is due to the large surface area per unit volume and the random internal structure of such porous medium. The former promotes heat exchange rates by providing large surface area, while the latter enhances it by providing vigorous mixing of the working fluid, which gives rise to what is called dispersion (an added mechanism of heat transfer). Hence, momentum transport in porous media is critical for heat transfer analysis, computation and design. Porous media are also used as storage of nuclear waste. In such applications, the porous medium is confined by solid boundaries. These impermeable boundaries give rise to shear stress and boundary layers, which strongly influence the velocity field and the pressure drop inside the porous medium. The velocity field directly influence the heat transfer rate, while the pressure drop determines the required pumping power. The Brinkman-extended Darcy equation describes the momentum transport due to fully developed Newtonian fluid flow in confined porous media. This equation is an extension of the famous Darcy equation, and it contains the viscous shear at the boundaries as well as the viscous shear on the internal surface of the porous medium. The equation is solved analytically inside and outside the boundary layer in a cylindrical porous-media system. As, expected, the volume-averaged velocity decays as the distance from the boundary increases. The mean and maximum velocities are obtained and their behavior is investigated in terms of the Darcy number and the ratio of the effective to the actual fluid viscosity. The friction factor is defined based on the mean velocity and is found to be inversely proportional to the Reynolds number, the Darcy number and the mean velocity. The analytical velocity can be directly substituted in the governing convection heat transfer equation to assess the heat transfer performance of confined cylindrical heat exchange systems.