(142av) Numerical Modelling of Transitional and Turbulent Flow Through a Pore Doublet Model

J. Gunnar I. Hellstrom, Shervin Khayamyan, T. Staffan Lundstrom and

L. Hakan Gustavsson

Fluid Mechanics

Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics

Lulea University of Technology

Lulea 971 87, Sweden;

E-mail: staffan.lundstrom@ltu.se

Transitional and turbulent flow through a pore doublet model is studied numerically to mimic the interconnectivity of pore flow. The model consists of two parallel pipes with different diameters branched via a Y-shaped splitter from a (wider) header pipe. Recently performed experiments on this system have shown that transition in the system starts by turbulent slugs in the laminar flow at pipe Reynolds number larger than 2000. This is also confirmed by a peak of the skewness value. Frequency analysis furthermore shows that the pipes communicate at low frequency, but that higher frequencies are filtered out possibly due to the experimental set-up. The implication of the experimental results as to porous media flow is that flow is redistributed when the flow becomes turbulent in the larger pores.

In the present work simulations of the flow through a virtual model of the pore doublet model are performed with a number of different models for the transitional and turbulent flow. The simulations are verified and the results from the simulations are compared to the experiments and conclusions are presented.