Periodic Porous Media Flows in Regenerators

Abstract

Flow through porous media can be modeled and measured by focussing on the way that it differs from flow in an unobstructed regime. If this flow occurs within a highly transient periodic regime, the resulting flow begins to exhibit a dependency on the imposed transient pressure gradient and mass flow through the media. A model is offered to express this time dependency and the implications of this dependency on the resulting system of partial differential equations that represent periodic porous media flow in regenerators. Taking note of the resulting hyperbolic nature of this system and the boundary-condition-imposed temporal discontinuities in the entrance regions of the regenerator, a solution by the Method of Characteristics is proposed and the resulting characteristic lines and their compatibility equations are derived.