Hi, just made some calculations of heat transfer in porous media with fluid flow using FLUENT 5.3. Geometry was the quarter of an annulus filled with the porous media. Fluid flows from the top to the bottom. Inner temperature was set to 60 °C and inlet temperature was also 60 °C. down to the bottom a stationary temperature profile was reached. Unfortunately his differs a lot from the analytical solution, no matter which boundary condition was used. There were also great differences between convection boundary condition and heat flux. There were also discontinuities from the inner nodes to the last node near the boundary. Already tested some different solve options. Can somebody tell me, what the best what may be the best strategy to solve the problem? Thanks Jörg

The implementation of the effective thermal conductivity in porous media is incorrect in Fluent 5.3. I suspect this is contributing to this problem.

If you go to the www.fluent.com website and log into the registered users section this is listed in th defect section (id 2472).

This also explains what was actually implemented, which might help you set your materials properties in such a way as to compensate for the error.

Greg