Experimental Study of Darcy and Non-Darcy Flow in Porous Media

摘要

A simple experimental set-up is used to validate capillary-tube models of flow in porous media for (non-) spherical particlesudand coarse grains of particular/specific mesh sizes. Of the two models used, one model characterizes the structure of theudmedia apart from particle diameter or equivalent particle diameter for non-spherical objects compared to the other model. Theudmagnitude of computed tortuosity for particles/grains studied is in order, however, that of the spherical particles was slightlyudhigher than published values for spheres. Likewise, the ratio of dynamic to static specific surface area was below anticipatedudand known results in literature. For the non-spherical particle that was approximated as a half-oblate spheroid, the possibleuderror in computed volume and surface area may be the reason for the deviation of computed equivalent diameter from theudeffective diameter obtained by fitting Ergun correlation to experimental result. The deviation of computed results based onudthe conducted experiment may in fact be due to error in appropriately fitting straight line to plotted data and precision error ofudgauges, and possible hysteresis at low flow velocity due to experimental procedure