Porous Media Free-Flow Coupling Model Concepts: From Pore to Darcy-Scale

Explore the complexities of flow and transport processes in domains composed of porous media and adjacent free-flow regions in this comprehensive lecture. Delve into a wide range of applications, from industrial fuel cells and drying processes to bio-medical distribution in blood vessels and surrounding tissue, as well as environmental systems like rainfall infiltration and soil evaporation. Examine the challenges of current REV-scale models in accurately representing the intricate exchange of fluids, momentum, and energy between porous media and free-flow domains. Discover a newly developed model concept for coupling free flow with porous-medium flow on the pore-network scale, designed to address these challenges. Learn about the complex geometries and dynamics of relevant interfaces, and how they depend on the system's state. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of Pore Network Models (PNM) to REV (Darcy-Scale) models through selected examples, gaining valuable insights into the theoretical understanding of processes at different scales.