Predicting permeability tensors of foams using vector kinetic method

Abstract

Light cellular materials are increasingly used in many engineering applications due to several attractive properties including heat and mass transfer enhancement, low pressure drop compared to packed bed of spheres. It is therefore important to simulate the complex and unsteady flows by reliable numerical methods to determine intrinsic macroscopic hydraulic properties on actual foam structures. The approach of numerical simulations at pore scale has become popular criterion with the development of high performance computational power. Numerical studies based on a type of Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) were performed in the present work. Another kinetic method than LBM has been explored. A vector kinetic method is proposed which has the advantage of being non-diffusive, explicit, parallel, and use only physical variables instead of discrete velocity. The proposed numerical method is validated against experimental and numerical permeability data obtained on idealized isotropic idealized as well as real foam samples.