Porous Media Flow Solver

A new numerical solver for simulating flow through porous media has been implemented in OpenFOAM (version 2.0), achieving a conservation of the total mass of the system.

A macroscopic approach has been used to described the porous media flow in the numerical simulations, which calculates a mean behaviour within the porous zone (avoiding the disadvantages of microscopic approaches).

Due to the complexity and the lack of information of the internal structure of porous media, linear and nonlinear drag forces are modelled following Forchheimer’s formula (1091). Forchheimer parameters can either be expressed following Engelunds expressions (1954) or Van Gent expressions (1995).

The experiments carried out by Lin (1998) have been used to validate the model: dam break flow though different porous materials, crushed rocks (CR) and glass beads (GB). Comparison of mass conservation is shown too (old solver, dashed line, new solver, continuos line. blue is water, red is air).

This new solver is very important in coastal engineering to simulate wave interaction with all kinds of coastal structures (permeable or impermeable).