A steady state computational study was done to obtain the pressure drop estimation in different packed bed geometries, and describe the fluid flow characteristics for such complex structures. Two out of the three Bravais lattices were analyzed, namely, simple cubic (symmetric) and body centered cubic (staggered). STARCCM+ commercial CFD software from CD-ADAPCO was used to simulate the flow. To account for turbulence effects standard k-epsilon and realizable k-epsilon models were used. Various cases were analyzed with Modified Reynolds number ranging from 10,000 to 50,000. Each model showed different results as far as the velocity and flow structure is concerned. However, for each case the flow structure showed similar features such as vortex formation downstream and between pebbles due to complex flow separation [1]. The pressure drop obtained from each model was found to be in reasonable agreement with the existing data.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.