This is an Early Access feature that is still under development. View the Luminary Cloud Early Access Terms.
Porous Media Modeling is a computationally cost efficient approach to modeling permeable material or devices like a radiator in a car or a building’s HVAC system. A porous model introduces a momentum sink into the governing equations that creates a pressure loss based on the velocity of the flow.
Specify Darcy and Forchheimer coefficients for each orthogonal direction to account for materials where the flow resistance might be different in each direction. You can also specify Heat Source Power to model heat gain and loss.
Defining a Porous Model
Before defining a porous model, you'll need the Darcy and Forchheimer coefficients for your model. Porous Models can be created for Fluid Physics.
Navigate to your fluid physics, then click the + icon to the right of Physical Models in the control panel.
Select Porous Model.
Specify the Darcy Coefficients for the x, y, and z axes.
Specify the Forchheimer Coefficients for the x, y, and z axes.
(Optional) Specify Heat Source Power in Watts.
Click in the Volumes box and select volumes from the Geometry panel.
A reference frame to specify the direction of the fluid flow will be inferred from the volume. You can see this listed in the properties panel. Additionally, make sure to define interface boundary conditions to connect the volumes before running your simulation.
Important: Heat Source Power can only be applied when Density Relationship is set to Ideal Gas Law or Constant Density. Learn more about Density Relationship in the Materials article.