DescriptionPerforated plates feature patterns of holes, slots, or decorative shapes and are widely used in industrial applications such as filters, silencers, radiator grilles, ventilation, and separator plates. In CFD, the porous jump condition is used to model a thin "membrane" with known velocity and pressure-drop characteristics; typical uses include representing the pressure drop through screens and filters, and modeling radiators when heat transfer is not of concern. Perforated louvers, a common example, are generally used indoors to allow air to move from one area to another.This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate a porous-jump perforated-plate louver. A series of fluid flows is introduced into a rectangular duct, within which a porous region is created to study the flow behavior. The inlet and outlet use velocity inlet and pressure outlet conditions, respectively, with an inlet velocity magnitude of 1.5 m/s. The duct measures 1 × 1 × 10 m.Geometry & MeshThe 3D geometry was created in Design Modeler. Meshing was performed in ANSYS Meshing using a structured grid throughout the domain, with 85,760 elements.MethodologyThe simulation uses a steady, pressure-based solver with the RNG k-ε turbulence model to capture the shear and recirculation generated by the perforated plate (porous jump). Air is the working fluid, and the Discrete Phase Model is enabled with one-way coupling to track inert, uniformly sized particles without feedback to the continuous phase. The boundary conditions are a velocity inlet of 1.5 m/s, a pressure outlet at 0 Pa gauge, and stationary no-slip walls. The porous-jump thickness is set to 0.003 m, with the specified pressure-jump coefficient applied to represent the resistance of the plate — the heart of the model, since it reproduces the pressure drop across the perforated plate without resolving each individual hole. The DPM settings use Escape at the inlet and outlet and Reflect at the walls. The case is initialized with Standard Initialization (computed from the inlet) and advanced with a time scale factor of 1.ConclusionOn completion of the solution, the flow field around the perforated plate can be examined in detail. The velocity vectors show how the flow aligns as it passes through the perforated plate, and the pressure results reveal the drop imposed by the porous-jump region.This behavior reflects a common practical need: piping systems include numerous fittings — bends, valves, tees, enlargements, and contractions — and fluids passing through them often emerge maldistributed, which can be undesirable. Perforated plates are a frequently used means of homogenizing the flow, in addition to their other flow-control applications. The simulation demonstrates how the porous-jump approach efficiently captures the resistance and flow-conditioning effect of such a plate, making it a practical tool for evaluating perforated plates and similar thin flow-resistance elements.

Perforated Plate (Porous Zone) Inside 3D Channel — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project explores flow through a perforated plate inside a 3D channel using the porous-zone model in ANSYS Fluent. A perforated plate — a barrier pierced with many small holes — resists and reshapes a flow passing through it, and rather than meshing every individual hole, the plate is represented as a porous zone that imposes an equivalent resistance. This is a crucial technique for filtration, heat exchangers, and flow-control systems, where perforated structures are used to condition a flow. Within the Porous Media: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project introduces the full porous-zone model on a 3D perforated plate, building on the porous-jump case toward a volumetric porous treatment.MethodologyThe 3D channel with a perforated plate is created in ANSYS Design Modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with a structured grid of 14,544 elements, optimized for accurate flow simulation. A pressure-based solver is set up for the incompressible flow, and the porous zone is configured with appropriate porosity settings to represent the perforated plate's resistance, together with gravitational effects and realistic boundary conditions. The porous zone is the heart of the setup: it imposes the pressure drop and flow resistance of the plate without resolving each individual perforation.AnalysisPost-processing extracts pressure and velocity contours in 2D and 3D, focusing on the pressure-drop characteristics across the perforated plate and the velocity-profile changes before and after the porous zone. The results reveal the sudden pressure drop across the plate and the relationship between porosity and pressure loss, along with how the velocity redistributes as the fluid approaches, passes through, and leaves the porous region — and the impact of the plate on the downstream flow. From these you can evaluate how the porous-zone properties shape the overall flow and inform perforated-plate design. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a porous-zone model for a perforated plate, define porosity and resistance settings, and interpret the pressure-drop and velocity results that characterize porous-media flow in a channel.

Porous Chamber Heat Transfer — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project explores heat transfer through porous media using ANSYS Fluent, analyzing the thermal behavior of a porous chamber. When fluid flows through a porous material while heat is exchanged, the combination of the solid matrix and the fluid filling its pores governs the overall heat transfer in a way that a plain fluid does not — making porous media a powerful tool for thermal management. Porous materials appear throughout heat exchangers, thermal energy storage, and electronic cooling, and understanding how they transfer heat is central to optimizing those systems. Within the Porous Media: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project introduces heat transfer to the porous-zone model, building on the flow-only cases toward coupled thermal-porous analysis.MethodologyThe project uses a pre-configured porous chamber model. The flow through the porous medium is governed by Darcy's law and its extensions, implemented through the porous-media model, while the heat transfer depends on the effective thermal conductivity that combines the solid and fluid phases. The mesh is generated to capture the porous structure appropriately, and the physical models are selected and configured — the porous-media model together with suitable turbulence and heat-transfer models. Boundary conditions are defined for the fluid inlet and outlet (flow rates, pressures, and temperatures) and for the thermal conditions at the porous-solid interfaces, so the coupled flow and heat transfer through the chamber are captured realistically.AnalysisPost-processing visualizes the flow patterns through velocity vectors and streamlines and the temperature distribution through contour maps, assessing the heat-transfer effectiveness across the chamber. A parametric study examines how changes in porosity and permeability affect the flow patterns, pressure drop, and heat-transfer rates, allowing the porous structure to be optimized for a given thermal application. The results also support calculating effective heat-transfer coefficients and evaluating local thermal non-equilibrium — the temperature difference between the solid and fluid phases. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a coupled porous-media heat-transfer simulation, apply Darcy's law with appropriate thermal boundary conditions, run a parametric study of porosity and permeability, and interpret the temperature and flow fields that determine the thermal performance of a porous chamber.

Heat Sink Cooling with a Porous Medium — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project simulates fluid flow inside a porous medium for heat sink cooling using ANSYS Fluent. The study of fluid flow in porous media is one of the most widely used fields in science: a porous medium consists mostly of perforated materials containing pores and void spaces within itself. Here, a porous aluminum foam in contact with a heat source acts as a heat sink — the fluid flows through the foam and absorbs heat from it, and the large internal surface area of the porous structure makes it an effective cooling element. Within the Porous Media: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project applies porous-media heat transfer to a practical cooling device, building on the porous chamber toward a real heat-sink application.MethodologyThe model is designed in three dimensions using Design Modeler. The geometry consists of a hollow section that acts as an inlet, followed by a porous aluminum foam in contact with a heat source. The mesh, generated in ANSYS Meshing, is structured with a total of 7,680 cells. The porous medium is in contact with the heat source, and the whole setup acts as a heat sink. The flow enters through the inlet boundary at a velocity of 1.99 m/s and a temperature of 300 K, then passes through the porous medium to absorb heat from it. The energy model is activated, and the RNG k-epsilon model with the standard wall function is used for the fluid flow analysis.AnalysisAt the end of the solution process, the temperature, velocity, and pressure fields are obtained, along with the streamlines and velocity vectors. As the pressure contour shows, the flow pressure behind the porous medium differs significantly from that at the outlet boundary, owing to the resistance the porous medium imposes on the flow. From these results you can follow how the fluid moves through the aluminum foam, how it absorbs heat from the source, and how the porous resistance shapes the pressure field. By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up a porous-medium heat-sink simulation with an activated energy model, represent a metal foam as a porous zone in contact with a heat source, and interpret the temperature, velocity, and pressure results that characterize porous-media cooling.

Water Infiltration into a Porous Concrete BlockDescriptionThis project simulates multiphase flow inside a porous cube using ANSYS Fluent. The main objective was to analyze the behavior of air and water within a porous medium using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model. The simulation was carried out under transient, pressure-based conditions to observe how water interacts with air under a specified inlet pressure. The work proceeded through four main stages: geometry creation, meshing, solver setup, and post-processing to visualize the flow and pressure distributions.Geometry and MeshThe geometry was created in ANSYS Design Modeler as a cube measuring 0.15 m × 0.15 m × 0.15 m, with the inlet area defined as 0.0038472951 m². The geometry was then imported into ANSYS Meshing, where a structured hexahedral mesh of approximately 1 million elements was generated. This mesh type was chosen for its accuracy and numerical stability in capturing multiphase interactions, and it maintains adequate cell density near the boundaries, effectively representing the cube.MethodologyThe simulation was performed in ANSYS Fluent using a pressure-based, transient solver. The standard k–ε turbulence model was selected to account for turbulent effects. Multiphase flow was modeled with the Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach, with air defined as the primary phase and water as the secondary phase. A porous zone was included in the domain, with an assumed particle diameter (Dp) of 0.0005 m. The pressure inlet boundary condition was set to 500,000 Pa, driving water into the cube. The SIMPLE algorithm was applied for pressure-velocity coupling to ensure stability and convergence over the 15-second simulation period.ConclusionThe results reveal the formation and interaction of the air and water phases within the cube over time. The VOF contours show the distribution of the water volume fraction, with water gradually rising through the porous region while displacing the air, and the air volume fraction plots highlight the interface separating the two phases. The velocity contours indicate that the maximum velocity occurs near the inlet region, while the upper portion of the cube remains largely stationary. The pressure distribution decreases gradually from the inlet toward the outlet, confirming the expected flow behavior through the porous medium. Overall, the simulation successfully demonstrates transient multiphase fluid interaction within a porous cube domain.

Drying Seed Behavior in a Porous Medium — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationThis project investigates the drying process of seeds within a semi-cylindrical domain packed with seed particles, using ANSYS Fluent to capture the coupled heat and mass transfer occurring as hot air flows through the seed bed. The simulation tracks temperature, moisture distribution, and velocity fields within the porous seed zone to evaluate how the drying process evolves over time under given thermal and flow conditions, offering insight into drying efficiency, local heat transfer, and vapor concentration patterns.Geometry and MeshThe geometry was built using ANSYS SpaceClaim and DesignModeler. Taking advantage of symmetry, only half of the physical domain was modeled, with the bottom surface defined as a symmetry boundary to reduce computational cost. Two zones were defined: a fluid zone representing the drying air, and a seed zone treated as a porous medium with a porosity of 0.418, reflecting the physical packing of the seeds. The domain was discretized in ANSYS Meshing using a tetrahedral mesh of approximately 4.5 million cells, providing sufficient resolution to resolve the temperature and velocity gradients around the seed particles.Model and Solver SettingsA pressure-based transient solver was used to capture the time-dependent heat and mass transfer behavior, with gravity set to -9.81 m/s² in the Y-direction to correctly account for buoyancy. The energy equation was activated to model heat exchange between the hot air and the seed surfaces, and the RNG k-ε turbulence model was selected for its accuracy in capturing recirculating and swirling flows within porous media. The species transport model was enabled to track water vapor (H₂O) concentration, with air, H₂O, and wheat defined as the working materials. Pressure-velocity coupling was handled using the SIMPLEC algorithm, with a velocity inlet for the incoming hot air and a pressure outlet for the exiting flow. The transient formulation allowed the temperature and moisture fields within the seed zone to be monitored over time.ResultsThe temperature contours show a gradual rise across the seed bed, with values ranging from approximately 302.6 K to 303.1 K, indicating a gentle but effective drying process. The H₂O mass fraction contours show a progressive decrease in vapor concentration along the airflow path, confirming that moisture is being removed from the seed surfaces. Velocity streamlines show the air accelerating as it passes through the porous region, enhancing convective heat and mass transfer. Together, the flow, temperature, and species fields indicate that the airflow is well distributed through the porous bed, promoting uniform drying conditions throughout the domain. These results can help guide the optimization of airflow velocity, porosity, and inlet temperature for improved drying performance in industrial applications.

DescriptionThe use of porous media inside tubular structures has become a key strategy for sound absorption. This technique takes advantage of the inherent properties of porous materials to dissipate sound energy, thereby reducing noise pollution and improving the acoustic environment within the tube.In this project, we simulate the phenomenon of sound absorption inside a pipe, where a porous medium serves as a silencer. The primary aim is to measure two key parameters across a wide range of frequencies:Transmission Loss (TL) — the reduction in sound power as sound travels through the pipe filled with the porous medium. It is a critical quantity in many engineering applications where noise reduction is required.Sound Pressure Level (SPL) — the pressure deviation from ambient atmospheric pressure produced by a sound wave. Here, the interest lies in understanding how the SPL varies over a broad frequency range as sound propagates through the porous medium inside the pipe.The geometry was created in ANSYS SpaceClaim, and the computational domain was then divided into separate cell zones in ANSYS Meshing, generating 1,209,174 polyhedral cells.MethodologyTo achieve this, the Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings (FW-H) acoustic model was employed. This model is well regarded for its ability to accurately predict the acoustic behavior of a system, making it a suitable choice for the present simulation. The study aims to build a deeper understanding of how sound behaves under these conditions — insight with significant relevance to fields such as acoustical engineering and environmental noise control.The inlet and outlet are placed 200 mm and 500 mm from the silencer, respectively. Air enters the tube at a velocity of 5 m/s. The flow equations are first solved in steady-state form; the acoustic equations are then introduced and the solution continued in an unsteady (transient) manner.ConclusionAs the air enters the pipe, it must pass through the porous medium, which produces a marked pressure drop owing to the complex internal structure of the porous material. A stagnation point forms on the porous wall, and the velocity increases sharply in accordance with Bernoulli's equation. Both effects are visible in the figures below.From an acoustic standpoint, a comparable behavior is observed. To fulfill the study's objectives, three receivers were positioned within the domain: one placed 100 mm before the porous medium, and the other two placed 200 mm and 400 mm downstream of the porous silencer. When interpreting the results, note that the reference acoustic pressure is set to 2 × 10⁻⁵ Pa, so all reported values are relative to this reference level.

Three-Phase Flow Simulation in a Zigzag Channel Using ANSYS FluentIntroductionThis project simulates a three-phase flow mixture consisting of air, water, and kerosene within a square cross-section channel using ANSYS Fluent. The channel geometry includes a vertical section with two inlet openings at its top and bottom, connected to a zigzag horizontal section terminating in an outlet. In the initial state, only air occupies the channel; as the simulation proceeds, water enters through the upper inlet while kerosene enters through the lower inlet, allowing the three-phase interaction to develop over time.Geometry and MeshThe three-dimensional geometry was designed in Design Modeler, consisting of a vertical channel for fluid entry connected to a zigzag horizontal path formed by a series of perpendicular teeth-like segments. The channel cross-section is square with a side length of 0.0002 m, featuring two inlet sections at the top and bottom of the vertical portion and a single outlet at the end of the horizontal zigzag section. The domain was meshed using ANSYS Meshing with a structured mesh totaling 416,000 elements.MethodologyThe VOF multiphase model was used to capture the interaction between the three fluid phases. A porous zone with a porosity coefficient of 0.1 was defined within the channel to represent the flow resistance encountered along the path. Both inlet sections were assigned pressure-inlet boundary conditions with a relative pressure of 1000 Pa, while the single outlet was defined as a pressure outlet with a relative pressure of 0 Pa. The simulation was solved using a transient solver to track the volume fraction evolution of each phase over time, running for a total of 5 seconds with a time step of 0.1 seconds.Results and ConclusionTwo- and three-dimensional contours of pressure, velocity, and volume fraction for each of the water, air, and kerosene phases were obtained at the final second of the simulation. These results capture the progressive redistribution of the three phases as water and kerosene advance through the vertical and zigzag sections of the channel, illustrating how the porous zone and channel geometry jointly influence the multiphase flow development and phase distribution throughout the domain.

Data Center Cooling — ANSYS Fluent CFD SimulationDescriptionThis project simulates and evaluates the cooling performance of a data center using ANSYS Fluent. Data centers face increasingly demanding thermal-management challenges as rack power densities rise, particularly under AI and compute-intensive workloads, making effective cooling one of the central concerns in data center design and operation. The simulation targets the key factors that govern rack cooling performance: cold-air supply outlet placement, supply pressure, and the airflow-management strategies that prevent hot and cold air from mixing inefficiently. As the capstone of the Porous Media: Beginner CFD Training Package, this project applies the porous-zone model at full system scale, using porous media to represent server racks in a large, practical cooling problem.MethodologyThe server racks are modeled as porous media, representing their resistance to airflow in a computationally practical way while capturing the essential pressure-drop and flow-distribution behavior that determines how well cold air penetrates and cools the equipment inside each rack. Rather than resolving the detailed internal geometry of every rack, the porous-zone approach imposes an equivalent resistance, making a full data-center simulation tractable while still reproducing how the cold air distributes across the room and through the racks. The study examines the influence of the cold-air supply outlet placement and the supply pressure on the resulting cooling performance.AnalysisThe results demonstrate the critical role that outlet placement plays in overall cooling effectiveness. Positioning the cold-air supply outlet too close to the cooling unit causes cold-air bypass, where the supplied air short-circuits back toward the cooling unit without reaching the rack inlets, wasting airflow capacity and degrading cooling efficiency. Excessive supply pressure produces a similar outcome: the cold air streams past the front faces of the racks rather than entering them, again resulting in wasted airflow and insufficient rack cooling. Together, these findings give a clear, practical basis for data center layout decisions — specifically, that both outlet proximity and supply pressure must be carefully controlled to ensure cold air is actually delivered where the heat loads are, rather than bypassed before it can do useful work. By the end of this project, you'll be able to model server racks as porous zones in a data-center cooling simulation, study how outlet placement and supply pressure drive cold-air bypass, and interpret the flow and cooling results that inform effective data-center layout.

DescriptionThis lesson covers a CFD simulation of Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), the industrial process most widely used to produce hydrogen from hydrocarbon feedstock. In an SMR reactor, methane reacts with steam over a catalyst through a set of endothermic reactions to yield hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, with the heat these reactions require supplied externally by a burner in a surrounding heating chamber. The project models a sleeve-type SMR reactor, capturing both the catalytic reforming chemistry inside the tubes and the combustion process that drives it, making this a genuinely coupled, multi-physics chemical engineering problem rather than a single-mechanism simulation. The plant geometry, comprising the heating chamber and reforming tubes together, is built in Design Modeler and meshed with a large unstructured grid of roughly 1.65 million elements to resolve the multiple reacting zones.MethodologyBecause several chemical species, H2, CO, CO2, CH4, and O2, need to be tracked simultaneously, the Species Transport model is used to solve a transport equation for each. Chemistry is introduced through multiple volumetric reactions: three reforming reactions inside the tubes and a separate combustion reaction in the heating chamber, so the two reacting zones are handled with distinct reaction sets appropriate to their chemistry. The catalyst inside the reforming tubes is represented as a porous medium, coupling the reacting flow directly to porous-zone momentum losses, and since the reforming reactions are endothermic, the heat exchange between the burner and the reforming tubes is modeled explicitly to sustain the reaction.AnalysisResults are read through mass fraction contours for each species, which trace methane being consumed and hydrogen being produced as the reacting mixture moves through the tubes. These contours let you confirm the reactor is behaving as intended: reforming reactions progressing appropriately along the tube length and heat transfer from the combustion chamber sustaining the endothermic reactions rather than allowing them to stall. More broadly, the combination of multi-reaction Species Transport with a catalytic porous zone demonstrated here is directly transferable to catalytic converters, other fuel reformers, and combustion systems across the process industries, since the underlying coupling between reacting flow and porous catalytic media is the same problem in each case.