Effect of random structure on permeability and heat transfer characteristics for flow in 2D porous medium based on MRT lattice Boltzmann method

•The text studies effect of porous structure on permeability when porosity and effective diameter are fixed.•A new relation is proposed in predicting the permeability of random porous medium with unequal cylinder diameters.•A new formulation on dimensionless parameter of quadratic Forchheimer regime is applied to the Forchheimer equation.•A general set of heat transfer correlation is proposed when porosity is considered.

Flow and heat transfer through a 2D random porous medium are studied by using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). For the random porous medium, the influence of disordered cylinder arrangement on permeability and Nusselt number are investigated. Results indicate that the permeability and Nusselt number for different cylinder locations are unequal even with the same number and size of cylinders. New correlations for the permeability and coefficient b′Denb′Den of the Forchheimer equation are proposed for random porous medium composed of Gaussian distributed circular cylinders. Furthermore, a general set of heat transfer correlations is proposed and compared with existing experimental data and empirical correlations. Our results show that the Nu number increases with the increase of the porosity, hence heat transfer is found to be accurate considering the effect of porosity.