Potential flow past a porous body with a core of different permeability

It is well known that a uniform flow past a non-permeable rigid body does not exert a total force upon the surface of the body, however this is not the case when the body is permeable. Power et. al. (1984, 1986) first solved the problem of uniform potential flow past a two-dimensional permeable circular cylinder, with constant permeability, and found that the exterior flow exerts a drag force upon the surface of the cylinder independent of its size and secondly the problem when the uniform potential flow past a porous sphere, with constant permeability, in this case the exterior flow exerts a drag force on the sphere which is linearly dependent on the radius of the sphere. Here we will present the solution of two problems, a uniform potential flow past a porous circular cylinder and past a porous sphere, for each case the porous body is composed of two materials with different permeabilities. In both cases the total force exerted by the exterior flow upon the body is dependent on the thickness of the porous materials, and in the limit when the two permeabilities are equal, the previous results, circular cylinder and sphere, with constant permeability, are recovered. Atlhough, the mathematics involved in the solution of the present problem is simple, due to the nice boundary geometry of the bodies, the final expression for the total force found in each case is quite interesting on the way it depends on the permeability relation, in particular, in the limiting cases of a porous body with solid or hollow core.