Discussion: 'A Numerical Study of Thermal Dispersion in Porous Media' and 'Numerical Determination of Thermal Dispersion Coefficients Using a Periodic Porous Structure'

摘要

In the two papers, Kuwahara et al. investigated thermal dispersion in convective flow in porous media by using a two-dimensional periodic model of porous structure. In their study, a macroscopically uniform flow is assumed to pass through a collection of square rods placed regularly in an infinite space, where a macroscopic temperature gradient is imposed perpendicularly and in parallel to the macroscopic flow direction, respectively. Due to the periodicity of the model, only one structure unit is taken for a calculation domain to resolve an entire domain of porous medium. Exhaustive numerical computations were conducted for thermal dispersion conductivity.