Predicting Tortuosity for Airflow Through Porous Beds Consisting of Randomly Packed Spherical Particles

This article presents a numerical method for determining tortuosity in porous beds consisting of randomly packed spherical particles. The calculation of tortuosity is carried out in two steps. In the first step, the spacial arrangement of particles in the porous bed is determined by using the discrete element method (DEM). Specifically, a commercially available discrete element package (PFC3D ) was used to simulate the spacial structure of the porous bed. In the second step, a numerical algorithm was developed to construct the microscopic (pore scale) flow paths within the simulated spacial structure of the porous bed to calculate the lowest geometric tortuosity (LGT), which was defined as the ratio of the shortest flow path to the total bed depth. The numerical algorithm treats a porous bed as a series of four-particle tetrahedron units. When air enters a tetrahedron unit through one face (the base triangle), it is assumed to leave from another face triangle whose centroid is the highest of the four face triangles associated with the tetrahedron, and this face triangle will then be used as the base triangle for the next tetrahedron. This process is repeated to establish a series of tetrahedrons from the bottom to the top surface of the porous bed. The shortest flow path is then constructed geometrically by connecting the centroids of base triangles of consecutive tetrahedrons. The tortuosity values calculated by the proposed numerical method compared favourably with the values obtained from a CT image published in the literature for a bed of grain (peas). The proposed model predicted a tortuosity of 1.15, while the tortuosity estimated from the CT image was 1.14.