Inertia onset in disordered porous media flow.

We investigate the onset of the inertial regime in the fluid flow at the pore level in three-dimensional, disordered, highly porous media. We analyze the flow structure in a wide range of Reynolds numbers starting from 0.01 up to 100. We focus on qualitative and quantitative changes that appear with increasing Reynolds number. To do that, we investigate the weakening of the channeling effect, defined as the existence of preferred flow paths in a system. We compute tortuosity, spatial kinetic energy localization, and the pore-space volume fraction containing negative streamwise velocity to assess accompanying changes quantitatively. Our results of tortuosity and participation number derivatives show that the onset of inertia is apparent for Reynolds number Re∼0.1, an order of magnitude lower than indicated by analyzing relations of friction factor with the Reynolds number. Moreover, we show that the vortex structures appear at Reynolds number two orders of magnitude higher than the onset of inertia.