Simulating the drying of a Porous material

Project Support
1

Hello,

i am trying to simulate the drying of a porous material with an airflow pushed though it.

Description of the process: porous material aggregate bound with a water-based adhesive.
Process: Currently, the material is placed in a 250 x 250 mm mold. The height of the material varies from 4 cm (150 kg/m³) to 6 cm (70 kg/m³). Next, the material is dried and bonded by a flow of air. We use a pump producing +190 mbar and a maximum volume of 2.4 m³/min to blow air through the material.

problem: the material dry faster around the edges, this create a path of least resistance that the air follows. As a consequence the material take a very long time to dry at its core.

Here is what we put together.

Is there anyone who could assist since it is the first time I am doing such simulation!

I have a simulation running for 50h and it is only at 17% is this normal?

2

Hello @vaillyth , and thanks for reaching out to us via Forum!

That’s an interesting project indeed! I noticed that you’ve been using transient simulations, although a steady-state approach is usually a good start to achieve initial results. Do you really need time-dependent solutions, or perhaps an equilibrium state would be enough for you? Transient simulations are known to be quite computationally demanding, which is why they are taking so long.

In case you certainly need transient runs, perhaps you may need to increase the desired Courant number in simulation control further, which should be applicable for single-phase simulations. Please have a look at the following page for more information:

I hope these help!

Best wishes, Kaan