The nature of flows through porous media (Q1086097)

The present paper points out that the pressure drop of a porous media flow is only due to a small extent to the shear force term usually employed to derive the Kozeny-Darcy law. For a more correct derivation, additional shear terms have to be taken into account since the fluid is also exposed to elongational forces when it passes through the porous media matrix. These are usually not taken into account in the conventional theoretical treatment of flow through porous media as is explained in the literature. This explains why the available theoretical derivations of the Kozeny-Darcy relationship, which are based on one part of the shear-caused pressure drop only, require an adjustment of the constant in the theoretically derived equation to be applicable to experimental results. Details of this derivation are given in this paper and existing derivations are extended to yield better agreement with experiments.