Designer Porous Materials for Flow Control: Effective Property Characterization

Abstract

Appropriately structured porous materials have the potential to reduce turbulent skin friction, delay separation, reduce acoustic emissions, and regulate temperature effectively. Yet, our ability to design porous materials for these applications is limited. This is primarily because modeling unsteady, turbulent flows through porous surfaces remains a challenge. Resolving the complete porous microstructure in turbulent flow simulations is often computationally intractable. As a result, flow through porous materials is often modeled using effective or bulk averaged equations. However, there are no universally accepted methodologies that can estimate the effective properties of a material given its microstructure and anticipated flow conditions. To address this need, this collaborative project seeks to develop experimental and numerical techniques that can estimate the full 3D flow resistance (e.g., permeability) created by porous materials with a specific microstructure for Air Force relevant flow conditions (i.e., high Reynolds number turbulent flows). New experimental platforms will be developed at USC to measure the complete 3D flow resistance generated by porous materials in both steady and unsteady flows. Simultaneously, a numerical upscaling approach will be developed to estimate effective properties from microscale resolving direct numerical simulations at the scale of a representative unit cell of the material.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Jan 14, 2022
Source ID
FA95501917027

Entities

People

  • Mitul Luhar

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • United States Air Force
  • University of Southern California

Tags

Readers

  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.
  • Nanocomposite Materials Science
  • Systems Analysis and Design