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Characteristics of turbulence in a face-centred cubic porous unit cell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2019

Xiaoliang He ,
Sourabh V. Apte Open the ORCID record for Sourabh V. Apte [Opens in a new window] ,
Justin R. Finn  and
Brian D. Wood Open the ORCID record for Brian D. Wood [Opens in a new window]
Xiaoliang He
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA
Sourabh V. Apte*
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA
Justin R. Finn
Affiliation:
Department of Civil Engineering and Industrial Design, School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK
Brian D. Wood
Affiliation:
School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) are performed in a triply periodic unit cell of a face-centred cubic (FCC) lattice covering the unsteady inertial, to fully turbulent, flow regimes. The DNS data are used to quantify the flow topology, integral scales, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) transport and anisotropy distribution in the tortuous geometry. Several unique flow features are observed within this low porosity configuration, where the mean flow undergoes strong acceleration and deceleration regions with presence of three-dimensional helical motions, weak wake-like structures behind spheres, stagnation and jet-impingement-like flows together with merging and spreading jets in the main pore space. The jet-impingement and weak wake-like flow structures give rise to regions with negative total TKE production. Unlike flows in complex shaped ducts, the turbulence intensity levels in the cross-stream directions are found to be larger than those in the streamwise direction. Furthermore, due to the compact nature and confined geometry of the FCC packing, the turbulent integral length scales are estimated to be less than 10 % of the bead diameter even for the lowest Reynolds number studied, indicating the absence of macroscale turbulence structures for this configuration. This finding suggests that even for the highly anisotropic flow within the pore, the upscaled flow statistics are captured well by the representative volumes defined by the unit cell.

JFM classification

Low-Reynolds-number flows: Porous media Turbulent Flows: Turbulence simulation
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 873 , 25 August 2019 , pp. 608 - 645
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Copyright
© 2019 Cambridge University Press 

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