The microstructural effects of randomly generated porous media on interfacial convective heat transfer

Abstract

Heat and momentum transfer in a random generated porous media is investigated. 6 different random porous media are generated using a Monte–Carlo (MC) procedure. The continuity, momentum and energy equations are solved for a row of cylinders with a square cross-section (i.e. rods) representing the entire domain of a random porous medium. The microstructure properties of the random porous media such as the mean nearest neighbor distance and the standard deviations of Voronoi areas, nearest neighbor distance and neighbor orientation for each generated random porous medium are obtained and compared with each other. The velocity and temperature fields in the porous media are shown via isotherms and streamlines. The rods in the domain are classified into three groups as blocker, active and passive rods based on our observations from the temperature field and the variations of the Nusselt number of each rod. The preliminary obtained results show that it may be possible to predict the interfacial heat transfer coefficient in a random porous medium based on some microstructure properties. © 2014, Begell House Inc. All rights reserved.