Scale Collapse of Vortices at Porous-Fluid Interfaces

Abstract: The interaction between externally generated turbulence and porous media is central to many engineering and environmental flows, yet the fate of macroscale vortical structures at a porous/fluid interface remains uncharacterized. By numerically simulating the turbulent flow, we investigate the penetration, breakdown, and turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) transport of macroscale vortices impinging on porous matrices with high porosities $φ$ = 0.80-0.95. For all porosities considered, macroscale vortices collapse abruptly at the porous interface and do not persist within the matrix, supporting the pore-scale prevalence of turbulence even under strong external forcing. Although vortex impingement injects TKE into the porous medium through turbulent transport at the interface, this supplied TKE is rapidly redistributed and dissipated as the flow reorganizes to satisfy pore-scale geometric constraints. Deeper within the porous layer, turbulence is sustained primarily by local shear production associated with pore-scale velocity gradients, and the internal flow becomes increasingly independent of upstream conditions. Variations in porosity modulate the relative balance between production and dissipation by altering geometric confinement and effective Reynolds number, but the dominant turbulent length scale within the porous matrix remains set by the pore size. These results demonstrate that porous media act as a robust geometric filter that enforces pore-scale-dominated turbulence regardless of external forcing.