ISSN Online: 2379-1748
ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-472-4
ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-471-7
3rd Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference (TFEC)
HIGH-FIDELITY VELOCITY MEASUREMENTS IN A MATCHED REFRACTIVE INDEX FACILITY OF RANDOMLY PACKED SPHERES
Abstract
Flows in packed beds are encountered in many engineering applications, such as solar thermal energy storages,
chemical catalytic reactors, petroleum and civil engineering (oil and water filtering systems), magnetic
refrigerators, biological tissues, and nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, complex geometries and randomly connected
void spaces within packed beds have hindered efforts to characterize the underlying transport phenomena.
Fully leveraging the advantages of this type of packed beds requires a fundamental understanding
of flow topology within the randomly packed sphere beds. In this paper, high-fidelity velocity measurements
using Time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (TR-PIV) at the pore scales and near the wall boundary are
performed in the matching-refractive-index (MRI) facility. Effects of the wall boundary, a low bed-to-bead
diameter ratio and Reynolds numbers to the flow patterns will be investigated. From the obtained velocity
vector fields, the first- and second-order flow statistics will be computed.