Pressure Drop in High-Density Porous Metals via Tomography Datasets

Abstract

This study combines three-dimensional advanced imaging techniques and computational fluid dynamic modelling and simulation (CFD) to characterise the pressure drop of flowing fluid across high-density porous metals utilising high-resolution X-ray computed tomography data. The modelling approach quantifies the combined effects of pore volume fraction, pore connectivity, pore size and morphology on the flow behaviour of porous metals and to study in more detail the pressure drop behaviour characterised by the sudden change in pore volume by stacking of differential porous samples at the pore-level. The resulting predicted values of the pressure drop as a function of superficial fluid velocity ranging from Darcy to turbulent fluid flow regimes were used to account for the permeability (k0) and Form drag coefficient (C) of these materials. Supportable agreement between CFD modelled data against empirical measurements available in the literature was substantiated. Therefore it is considered that this approach could lead practically to minimizing the number of design iterations required for the processing of novel-attributing porous metallic materials for applications involving fluid flow.