TURBULENT FLUID/POROUS INTERFACE TREATMENT FOR LOW-PERMEABILITY POROUS MEDIA

This article presents an enhanced wall-like treatment (EWT) for representing turbulence at low-permeability fluid/porous interfaces that is suitable for simulating conjugate fluid-porous domains using a conjugate volume -averaged approach. The EWT model utilizes the Boussinesq approach and the standard k -e model to treat the tur-bulence in the clear fluid region, while a double-decomposed k -epsilon porous media model is utilized inside the porous material. An implicit interface coupling between fluid and porous regions is utilized by modifying turbulence behavior at the fluid/porous interface to handle low-permeability porous materials, and apportioning the turbulent-affected in-terface shear stress accordingly. Using a case of a porous obstruction in a two-dimensional channel, the hydrodynamics of low-permeability interfaces are simulated using an in-house code. In order to verify the efficacy of the approach and investigate the behavior of turbulence around the interface for different low porosities (and permeabilities), a series of pore-level CFD simulations are conducted for digitally-generated, low-permeability porous media representing porosi-ties of 4%, 10%, 20%, and 30%, using a novel in-house digital porous media generating technique. Utilizing the EWT yields better physical behavior than other approaches in low-permeability (and porosity) cases without the need for jump coefficients or tuning.