On contact point modifications for forced convective heat transfer analysis in a structured packed bed of spheres

•A systematical study on contact modifications is performed for structured packed beds.•The bridges modification is found to give the most reasonable macroscopic results.•The overlaps and bridges methods are suitable for predicting local heat transfer.•Reasonable bridge diameter is found in a range from 16% dp to 20% dp.

The present paper systematically investigated the appropriateness of different contact point modification approaches for forced convective heat transfer analysis in structured packed beds of spheres. The three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations and RNG k–ɛ turbulence model with scalable wall function are adopted to model the turbulent flow inside the pores. Both macroscopic and local flow and heat transfer characteristics for different packing forms (simple cubic, body center cubic and face center cubic packing forms) and contact treatments (gaps, overlaps, bridges and caps modifications) are carefully examined. In particular, the effects caused by the bridge size for the bridges treatment are discussed, and the numerical results are compared with available experiments in literature. It is found that the effects of contact treatments on the pressure drops are remarkable for different structured packing forms, especially when the porosity is relatively low, while such effects on the Nusselt numbers are relatively small. Among the four different contact modifications, the bridges method would give the most reasonable pressure drops for all the structured packing forms studied and this method is also proved to be suitable for predicting the Nusselt numbers. The local flow and heat transfer characteristics in the structured packed bed are sensitive to the methodology of contact modifications. The gaps and caps treatments would distort the local flow and temperature distributions in the packed bed, especially near the contact zones. While the local flow and temperature distributions from the overlaps and bridges treatments would be more reasonable and close to those in the original packing with points contact. Based on both the macroscopic and local flow and heat transfer analyses, the bridges treatment is recommended. The effects caused by the bridge size in the bridges treatment are also remarkable. It is noted that too small or too large bridge size would lead to unreasonable results for both the macroscopic and local flow and heat transfer analyses. A reasonable range of bridge diameter is found to be from 16% dp to 20% dp.