Open Access

ARTICLE

Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics in Porous Media with Explicit Structure: A Multi-Physical Field Coupling Study

Kai Luo¹, Yifei Xie¹, Kun Chen¹, Haibing Chen^2,*, Wei Tang^1,*, Shaohua Bi³, Jirong Zhang³, Weifeng He³
1 Nantong Cigarette Filter Co., Ltd., Nantong, China
2 China Tobacco Jiangsu Industrial Co., Ltd., Nanjing, China
3 College of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China
* Corresponding Author: Haibing Chen. Email: ; Wei Tang. Email:
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Phase-Change Heat Transfer and Thermal-Hydraulics for Advanced Nuclear Systems)

Frontiers in Heat and Mass Transfer https://doi.org/10.32604/fhmt.2026.084890

Received 30 April 2026; Accepted 02 June 2026; Published online 20 July 2026

Abstract

The internal structure of porous media is strongly correlated with flow and thermal transport characteristics, which further influences the overall heat transfer performance of the entire system. Based on explicit structural representation, a three-dimensional numerical method for coupled flow and heat transfer in multi-layered porous sheet arrays is established, utilizing momentum source terms for porous media and a local thermal equilibrium heat transfer model. The impacts from porosity, inlet velocity, and heating power on the flow and heat transfer characteristics within the segment are systematically investigated, with the porosity range determined based on microstructural observations, and the validation of the flow characteristics is achieved through experiments. It is found that within the inlet velocity range from 0.1 to 0.4 m/s, the flow resistance increases approximately linearly with velocity from 0.076 to 0.322 kPa at ε = 0.2. Regarding the heat transfer characteristics, heating power is identified as the dominant factor governing the overall temperature distribution. In addition, an increase in inlet velocity is found to reduce the volumetric average temperature of the porous segment. Under the low-power, low-velocity conditions tested at 1 W and 0.1 m/s, the influence of porosity on the volumetric average temperature is relatively weak across the investigated range of ε from 0.1 to 0.3. However, under substantially higher heating powers or flow rates, the influence of porosity may become more significant and requires further investigation. The maximum deviation between the experimental and numerical flow resistance results across all tested flow rates is 4.8%, with an average absolute deviation of approximately 3.2%, validating the effectiveness of the explicit structure model, which constructs the foundation to obtain the precise heat transfer characteristics of the porous media system.

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Keywords

Porous media; flow and heat transfer characteristics; explicit structure; local thermal equilibrium; multi-physical field coupling

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