Investigation of the Permeability of Anisotropic Fibre Structures Through CFD Simulation

• Published in: Transport in porous media Vol. 108; no. 2; pp. 313 - 333
• Main Authors: Heitzmann, R., Tempfli, E., Schmidt, F. P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anisotropy; Civil Engineering; Classical and Continuum Physics; Computational fluid dynamics; Computer simulation; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Fibre; Finite element method; Fluid flow; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Heat transfer; Hydraulics; Hydrogeology; Hydrology/Water Resources; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Mathematical models; Numerical methods; Permeability; Porosity; Porous media; Simulation; Sintering (powder metallurgy); Thermal conductivity; Three dimensional models; Anisotropic; Hydraulic permeability; Metallic fibre structures; Virtual structures; Sintered
• ISSN: 0169-3913; 1573-1634
• DOI: 10.1007/s11242-015-0477-x

Sintered metallic fibre structures are, due to large specific surface area and high specific heat conductivity, of special interest in the field of heat transfer applications. Besides the heat transfer properties, it is essential to determine the hydraulic performance, characterized by the hydraulic permeability. In the present work, two different modelling approaches for determining the hydraulic permeability of real anisotropic fibre structures in the porosity range from 0.6 ≤ ϵ ≤ 0.9 are investigated. The first approach uses simplified and parametrized 3D fibre models, which are calculated based on the FEM. On the other hand, the second approach uses analytical models, which are based on the permeability of fibre arrays. By comparing the aforementioned methods with the numerical results of the first approach, the averaging method of Shou et al. ( 2011 ) could be identified to perform best. Indeed, both modelling approaches show a very good accordance of the permeability with the numerical calculations made with real fibre structures for porosities down to ϵ ≈ 0.7 . For lower porosities, the fibre character of the real structure vanishes and thus a porous medium with tortuous channels offers an alternative description.