Eur. Phys. J. B 64, 433-436 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00079-y

Inertial capture in flow through porous media

Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 60451-970 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil

Corresponding author: ^a soares@fisica.ufc.br

Received: 21 September 2007
Revised: 28 January 2008
Published online: 27 February 2008

Abstract

We investigate through numerical calculation of non-Brownian particles transported by a fluid in a porous medium, the influence of geometry and inertial effects on the capture efficiency of the solid matrix. In the case of a periodic array of cylinders and under the action of gravity, our results reveal that , where δ is the particle capture efficiency, and St is the Stokes number. In the absence of gravity, we observe a typical second order transition between non-trapping and trapping of particles that can be expressed as , with an exponent , where St_c is the critical Stokes number. We also perform simulations for flow through a random porous structure and confirm that its capture behavior is consistent with the simple periodic model.