On the apparent permeability of a porous layer backed by a perforated plate

Two-dimensional slow viscous flow from a fluid reservoir, through a porous layer and then through a perforated plate is studied assuming Stokes flow in the fluid reservoir and Darcy flow within the porous medium. It is first shown that the coupled Stokes/Darcy problem can be reduced to a Darcy problem when the various length scales are constrained such that Darcy's law is appropriate to describe flow in the porous layer in the vicinity of the perforations of the plate. The apparent permeability of the porous layer is studied as a function of the (uniform) thickness of the layer, and as a function of the size and spacing of the performations in the plate. The apparent permeability is shown to be significantly lower than the intrinsic permeability of the porous layer when the layer is sufficiently thin. Closed-form expressions for the apparent permeability are derived using conformal transformation techniques. We then present a model of particle deposition onto the perforated plate. The growth of the porous layer resulting from the deposition is studied, as is the evolution of its apparent permeability. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.