I assume you mean thickness as in the width of the medium and not the cross sectional area. So my radiator is 34mm thick. This is the value correct? I just want to be sure as i have seen some equations say thickness, then the description they give is actually for area.
It’s thickness (or width, length, as you prefer) in units of meters. When you define your porous medium, you will set a local coordinate system. This thickness would be the thickness of the porous medium in each one of the local directions.
Yes, the porous medium covers the pipe entirely. The geometry looks like this:
Any recommendations on simulation setup?
Well, the best option would be to work with data directly from the radiator supplier. Maybe you can find an empirical approximation formula for the forchheimer coefficient… it would be an approximation, of course.
For instance, there’s an approximation for the forchheimer coefficient for perforated plates called Van Winkle equation, where you estimate f based on the total area of the plate and total area of the holes.
And you can also use the d and f coefficients provided in one of the fsae tutorials as an approximation.