Simulation of flows through porous media

In this article we analyse the flow through 2D porous media by integration of the Navier-Stokes equations in a domain containing (a) a regular hexagonal and (b) a Gaussian distributed array of impenetrable circles. At low Reynolds numbers the Darcy law is recovered and the calculated permeability is in good agreement with experiments. For high Reynolds numbers the friction factor reaches a saturation value which is for the case (a) in the range of experimental data, whereas it is significantly smaller for the case (b). This can be explained by a larger influence of vortices on the main stream in case (a) than in case (b).