CFD modeling of natural convection in pebble bed geometry with finite volume method

ÇATALBAŞ, Salih Said

In this study, we used the finite volume method to computationally model natural convective flow in packed bed geometry. Using the OpenFOAM® v2112 code, we performed the computational analysis. We successfully meshed the intricate packed bed flow geometry, which consists of several spheres positioned at random. The spheres have sizes of 0.006 and 0.01 m, and the associated Rayleigh numbers are 1.83 × 107 and 8.48 × 107 respectively. We used the packed bed heights of H/d = 5, 10, and 20 in the simulations. By comparing the results of the OpenFOAM® v2112 simulations of the natural convection flow for all self-heating sphere in a packed bed, we demonstrated that the velocity distributions and Nusselt values are in good agreement with the experimental data. Additionally, it was evident from th...