Determination of pressure drop for air flow through sintered metal porous media using a modified Ergun equation

Abstract Sintered metal porous media currently play a significant role in a broad range of industrial equipments. The flow properties in porous media are generally approximated by Forchheimer regime or Ergun regime. In this study, a modified Ergun equation is developed to correlate the pressure drop with flow rate. Experimental and theoretical investigations on pressure drop are conducted with a series of metal-sintered porous media. A viscous drag region and a form drag region are defined with Reynolds number Re  = 1 and Re  = 10 as the boundary. The coefficient α and β in the equation are determined by, α first in the viscous drag region, then β in the form drag region. It is confirmed that theoretical pressure drop versus flow rate in terms of the modified Ergun equation provides close approximations to the experimental data. In addition, it is found that compressibility effect can aggravate the pressure drop. It is also concluded that there exists a range of transitional diameters, within which the wall effect on the pressure drop would become extraordinarily uncertain.

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