Buoyancy-Driven Flow in Saturated Porous Media

Author(s):  
Hitoshi Sakamoto ◽  
Francis A. Kulacki

Buoyancy-driven convection on a vertical, constant heat flux surface that bounds a fluid-saturated porous medium is experimentally studied with a primary focus on developing steady-state heat transfer correlations for porous media comprising different particulate solid with water being the interstitial fluid. Results show that heat transfer coefficients can be adequately determined via a Darcy-based model, and our results confirm a correlation proposed by Bejan [1]. It is speculated that the reason that the Darcy model works well in the present case is that the porous medium has a lower effective Prandtl number near the wall than in the bulk medium. The factors that contribute to this effects include the thinning of the boundary layer near the wall and an increase of effective thermal conductivity.

2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (6) ◽  
pp. 727-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Sakamoto ◽  
F. A. Kulacki

Measurements are reported of heat transfer coefficients in steady natural convection on a vertical constant flux plate embedded in a saturated porous medium. Results show that heat transfer coefficients can be adequately determined via a Darcy-based model, and our results confirm a correlation proposed by Bejan [Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer. 26(9), 1339–1346 (1983)]. It is speculated that the reason that the Darcy model works well in the present case is that the porous medium has a lower effective Prandtl number near the wall than in the bulk medium. The factors that contribute to this effect include the thinning of the boundary layer near the wall and an increase of effective thermal conductivity.


2009 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
V. V. Sobha ◽  
R. Y. Vasudeva ◽  
K. Ramakrishna ◽  
K. Hema Latha

Thermal dispersion due to local flows is significant in heat transfer with forced convection in porous media. The effects of parametrized melting (M), thermal dispersion (D), inertia (F), and mixed convection (Ra/Pe) on the velocity distribution, temperature, and Nusselt number on non-Darcy, mixed convective heat transfer from an infinite vertical plate embedded in a saturated porous medium are examined. It is observed that the Nusselt number decreases with increase in melting parameter and increases with increase in thermal dispersion.


1986 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. C. Reda

Natural convection heat transfer from a constant-flux cylinder, immersed vertically through a stratified (two-layer) liquid-saturated porous medium, was investigated experimentally. Measured radial temperature profiles and heat transfer rates agreed well with numerical predictions based on the work of Hickox and Gartling. The 1:6 permeability-ratio interface existing between the two layers was found to effectively trap buoyancy-driven fluid motion within the high-permeability region, beneath the interface. Within this high-permeability region, Nusselt number versus Rayleigh number data were found to correlate with previously measured results, obtained for the same basic geometry, but with a fully permeable upper-surface hydrodynamic boundary condition. In both cases, the vertical and radial extent of the region under study were large compared to the radius of the heat source. Combined results indicate that, for a given Rayleigh number in the Darcy-flow regime, heat transfer rates from cylinders immersed vertically in uniform liquid-saturated porous media of large vertical and radial extent potentially approach limiting values. Variable-porosity effects which occur in unconsolidated porous media adjacent to solid boundaries were investigated numerically for cases where the particle-to-heater diameter ratio was small (≈ 10−2). Results showed variable-porosity effects to have a negligible influence on the thermal field adjacent to such boundaries under conditions of Darcy flow.


2008 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihad Dukhan

In certain contemporary technologies, porous media with high solid-phase conductivity are impregnated with low-conductivity fluids, e.g., metal and graphite foam cooled by air. For such cases, an approximate analytical model for the developing heat transfer inside a two-dimensional rectangular porous medium subjected to constant heat flux is presented. The model neglects conduction in the fluid and assumes plug flow. The resulting nonthermal-equilibrium equations are solved for the solid and fluid temperatures by separation of variables. The temperatures decay exponentially as the distance from the heated base increases. The effects of the Biot and Peclet numbers are presented. Fully developed heat-transfer conditions are achieved at an axial distance equal to five times the height of the porous medium, with a constant Nusselt number equal to 3.


Author(s):  
Hitoshi Sakamoto ◽  
Francis A. Kulacki

Transient conduction on a vertical, constant heat flux surface in a saturated porous medium is studied experimentally and analytically with a focus on determining near-wall thermal diffusivity. For combinations of different particulate solid and interstitial fluid, which give a range of conductivity ratios, ks/kf, from 0.5 to 2400, the present study finds that early-time transient temperature profiles can be analytically predicted using the thermal conductivity of the interstitial fluid because the near-wall porosity approaches 1.0. The conjugate heat transfer analysis accurately predicts the time the conductive front takes to travel through the impermeable wall. The present study also finds that conductive heat transfer along the wall is dependent on the wall thickness and must be taken into account when assessing measurement of local and overall Nusselt numbers. The present results raise the possibility of reinterpretation of much of the porous medium heat transfer experiments that make up the current database.


2016 ◽  
Vol 139 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Navid O. Ghaziani ◽  
Fatemeh Hassanipour

In this study, the performance of a heat sink embedded with a porous medium and nanofluids as coolants is analyzed experimentally. The nanofluid is a mixture of de-ionized water and nanoscale Al2O3 particles with three different volumetric concentrations: ζ = 0.41%, 0.58%, and 0.83%. The experimental test section is a rectangular minichannel filled with metal foam, which is electrically heated to provide a constant heat flux. The porous medium is assumed to be homogeneous and the flow regime is laminar. The result of heat transfer enhancement by slurry of Al2O3 nanofluid in porous media is studied under various flow velocities, heat flux, porous media structure, and particle concentration of nanofluid. The effect of particles volume fraction on heat transfer coefficient is also studied. This experimental study discovers and/or confirms the following hypotheses: (1) nanoparticle slurry in conjunction with metal foam has a significant effect on heat transfer rate; (2) there is an optimum permeability for the foam resulting in maximal heat transfer rate; (3) for a fixed particle concentration, smaller particles are more effective in enhancing heat transfer; and (4) increasing particle concentration results in some gains, but this trend weakens after a threshold.


1991 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 747-756 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Ettefagh ◽  
K. Vafai ◽  
S. J. Kim

The importance and relevance of non-Darcian effects associated with the buoyancy driven convection in open-ended cavities filled with fluid-saturated porous medium is analyzed in this work. Several different flow models for porous media, such as Brinkman-extended Darcy, Forchheimer-extended Darcy, and generalized flow models, are considered. The significance of inertia and boundary effects, and their crucial influence on the prediction of buouancy-induced flow and heat transfer in open-ended cavities, are investigated. Analysis is made on the proper choice of parameters that can fully determine the criteria for the range of validity of Darcy’s law in this type of configuration. Critical values of the inertial parameter, Λcrit, below which, for any given modified Rayleigh number, the Darcy flow model breaks down, have been investigated. It is shown that the critical value of the inertial parameter depends on the modified Rayleigh number and that this critical value increases as Ra* increases. It is also observed that for higher modified Rayleigh number, the deviation from a Darcian formulation appears at Darcy numbers greater than 1×10−4. The Prandtl number effects on convective flow and heat transfer are shown to be quite significant for small values of Pr. The Prandtl number effects are reduced significantly for higher values of the Prandtl number.


Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Péter German ◽  
Mauricio E. Tano ◽  
Carlo Fiorina ◽  
Jean C. Ragusa

This work presents a data-driven Reduced-Order Model (ROM) for parametric convective heat transfer problems in porous media. The intrusive Proper Orthogonal Decomposition aided Reduced-Basis (POD-RB) technique is employed to reduce the porous medium formulation of the incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with heat transfer. Instead of resolving the exact flow configuration with high fidelity, the porous medium formulation solves a homogenized flow in which the fluid-structure interactions are captured via volumetric flow resistances with nonlinear, semi-empirical friction correlations. A supremizer approach is implemented for the stabilization of the reduced fluid dynamics equations. The reduced nonlinear flow resistances are treated using the Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method (DEIM), while the turbulent eddy viscosity and diffusivity are approximated by adopting a Radial Basis Function (RBF) interpolation-based approach. The proposed method is tested using a 2D numerical model of the Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR), which involves the simulation of both clean and porous medium regions in the same domain. For the steady-state example, five model parameters are considered to be uncertain: the magnitude of the pumping force, the external coolant temperature, the heat transfer coefficient, the thermal expansion coefficient, and the Prandtl number. For transient scenarios, on the other hand, the coastdown-time of the pump is the only uncertain parameter. The results indicate that the POD-RB-ROMs are suitable for the reduction of similar problems. The relative L2 errors are below 3.34% for every field of interest for all cases analyzed, while the speedup factors vary between 54 (transient) and 40,000 (steady-state).


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