Effects of point contact treatment methods on flow and heat transfer of structured packed beds

The treatment of sphere contact is a crucial issue on the numerical analysis of the flow and heat transfer in packed beds of particles. In this paper, the effects of three different treatment methods including introducing a gap, area contacting and cylindrically bridging on flow and heat transfer performances of structured packed beds of particles are investigated with CFD methods. The simulation results have shown that cylindrically bridging method is proved to be reasonable to simplify the sphere-sphere contact points. In laminar flow regime, similar results are obtained with three treatment methods. In turbulent flow regime, the point contact treatment methods have significant effects on flow of packed beds.