Materials, Methods & Technologies, Volume 8, 2014

Abstract: This paper reports an experimental study of the air flow through a fibrous porous medium based on Luffa cylindrica's fibers. For this purpose, an experimental set-up has been performed to determine the evolution of the pressure drop as a function of flow mean velocity. The results show that for the values of speed below 0.175 m /s, the pressure drop increases linearly with speed and the flow is correctly described by Darcy's law. Beyond this limit value and up to 0.644 m /s, we found that the pressure drop evolves quadratically with speed as a result of inertial effect that becomes more important. In this region the flow is correctly predicted by the Forchheimer's law. The permeability (K) of the medium was also determined experimentally. The values obtained for K agrees well with that calculated from empirical models of Carman-Kozeny and d’Ergun.