Transitional and Turbulent Flow in a Bed of Spheres as Measured with Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry

Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry has been used to investigate inertia dominated, transitional and turbulent flow in a randomly packed bed of monosized PMMA spheres. By using an index-matched fluid, the bed is optically transparent and measurements can be performed in an arbitrary position within the porous bed. The velocity field observations are carried out for particle Reynolds numbers, \({Re}_{{p}}\), between 20 and 3220, and the sampling is done at a frequency of 75 Hz. Results show that, in porous media, the dynamics of the flow can vary significantly from pore to pore. At \({Re}_{{p}}\) around 400 the spatially averaged time fluctuations of total velocity reach a maximum and the spatial variation of the time-averaged total velocity, \(u_\mathrm{tot}\) increases up to about the same \({Re}_{{p}}\) and then it decreases. Also in the studied planes, a considerable amount of the fluid moves in the perpendicular directions to the main flow direction and the time-averaged magnitude of the velocity in the main direction, \(u_{x}\), has an averaged minimum of 40% of the magnitude of \(u_\mathrm{tot}\) at \({Re}_{{p}}\) about 400. For \({Re}_{{p}} > 1600\), this ratio is nearly constant and \(u_{x}\) is on average a little bit less than 50% of \(u_\mathrm{tot}\). The importance of the results for longitudinal and transverse dispersion is discussed.