  The present paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation of the
dispersion of the gaseous jet flow and co-flow for the simple unit cell (SUC)
and body centered cubic (BCC) configuration of particles in packed beds. The
experimental setup is built in such a way, that suitable and simplified
boundary conditions are imposed for the corresponding numerical framework. The
SUC and BCC particle beds consist of 3D-printed spheres. The flow velocities
are analysed directly at the exit of the particle bed, for both beds for
particle Reynolds numbers of 200, 300, and 400. Stereo particle image
velocimetry (SPIV) is experimentally arranged in such a way, that the
velocities over the entire region at the exit of the packed bed are obtained
instantaneously. The numerical method consists of a state-of-the-art IBM with
AMR. The paper presents the pore jet structure and velocity field exiting each
pore for the SUC and BCC packed particle beds. The numerical and experimental
studies show a good agreement for the SUC configuration for all flow
velocities. For the BCC configuration, some differences can be observed in the
pore jet flow structure between the simulations and the experiments, but the
general flow velocity distribution shows a good overall agreement. The axial
velocity is generally higher for the pores located near the centre of the
packed bed than for the pores near the wall. In addition, the axial velocities
are observed to increase near the peripheral pores of the packed bed. This
behaviour is predominant for the BCC configuration as compared to the SUC
configuration. It is shown that both the experiments and the simulations can be
used to study the complex fluid structures inside a packed bed reactor.
