Inertial and Darcy’s Terms Ratio in Boundary Layer at Fluid–Porous Medium Interface

Abstract

The study considers the forced boundary-layer flow overlying the Darcy–Brinkman porous medium and gives a quantitative analysis of the nonlinear inertial terms in the Brinkman filtration equation. The inertial terms are shown to be larger than the Darcy’s drag near the porous medium interface. The applicability range of boundary-layer approach is determined. It is suitable in high-permeable media with moderate velocities of an external flow. If it is slow enough, the inertial terms can be omitted in spite of interface effect. On the other hand, fast external flow produces the filtration with large pore-scale Reynolds number; therefore, the Forchheimer’s drag should be taken into account. It is shown the Brinkman term as well as inertial terms have a significant role in boundary-layer formation within the porous medium.