Due to its numerous and significant applications, including packed-bed regenerators, solid matrix heat exchangers, petroleum processing, geothermal energy extraction, transpiration cooling, catalytic and chemical particle beds, micro-thrusters, and many more, fluid flow and convection heat transfer in porous media have been extensively studied experimentally and numerically for many years. This research has shown that porous media can enhance fluid mixing and expand the surface area in contact with the coolant, making porous structures a useful tool for enhancing heat transfer. Based on the reference paper entitled “ Numerical simulation of fluid flow and convection heat transfer in sintered porous plate channels”, the present CFD study is conducted. It is targeted to validate this paper.

Figure 1- Schematic of the physical model

Simulation Process

The physical system is initially drawn using Design Modeler. It is then discretized into tetrahedron elements in ANSYS Meshing. As previously implied, it is a paper validation study. As given in the reference paper, Forchheimer equation suggest different terms like the dimensionless F that often vary with changes in porosity and structure of porous medium. The results are summarized in Table 2 of reference paper.

Post-processing

Given the assumed particle diameter of 1.2mm, the reference paper findings show F=0.503. This value is then calculated based on the existing relations. The results report F as 0.511. In other words, there is only 1.8% error between CFD findings and the numerical paper reports. It can be concluded that the present CFD simulation is fully validated.