Investigation of flow through triply periodic minimal surface-structured porous media using MRI and CFD

Abstract

Advances in additive manufacturing technology are making ordered porous media, such as those based on triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS), increasingly feasible alternatives to random porous media for applications ranging from chromatography to heat exchange. Process performance in these applications is controlled by the flow characteristics within the channels. In this work, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were used to study flow through a Schwarz Diamond TPMS column for Reynolds numbers up to 30. The CFD simulations were in good quantitative agreement with the MRI experiments. The velocity images illustrate a transition from creeping flow to inertial flow. The inertial flow regime exhibits flow splitting in each channel, where recombination depends on the extent of inertia. These results demonstrate that MRI and CFD are both suitable techniques for understanding the mechanisms underlying reported enhanced transfer performance (e.g. low axial dispersion) in TPMS devices.