A high-precision method for calculating the pressure drop across wire mesh filters

Three structural parameters were defined based on the characteristics of wire mesh filters: wire diameter, layer spacing and mesh size. The pressure drops across two different mesh pads were measured under different superficial air velocities in a wind tunnel. A new geometrical simplification method for numerical simulations was proposed. Using the large amount of calculated pressure drop data, a new expression was derived for predicting pressure drops across mesh pads. Good agreement was achieved among the experimental data, simulated data and expression data which demonstrated that the derived expression can accurately predict pressure drops.