A Novel Combined Experimental and Numerical Methodology for Aerodynamic Characterisation of Porous Media

This study examines the aerodynamic behaviour of thin perforated plates through a combined experimental and numerical methodology integrating wind-tunnel measurements, fully resolved CFD of the test section, and computationally efficient periodic ``modulus'' simulations. The objective is to provide reliable and transferable drag coefficients for porous plates employed in façade engineering and flow-control applications.The three standard approaches for estimating aerodynamic drag (force balance, total-pressure drop, and static-pressure difference across the plate) are systematically compared under imposed flow-rate conditions. Although often treated as equivalent, the methods yield non-coincident results. High-resolution CFD demonstrates that the static-pressure field on the windward face of the plate is intrinsically non-uniform, leading to a systematic overestimation of drag when pointwise static-pressure measurements are used. This motivates the introduction of a physically based correction factor, γ ≈ 5%, which is experimentally validated and enables static-pressure estimates to be aligned with force-balance data.Once validated, simulations in cyclic ``modulus'' configuration (where only the smallest repeating unit of the perforated plate is simulated) accurately reproduce the global aerodynamic response of the plates at a greatly reduced computational cost, enabling extensive parametric analyses. Results show that porosity is the dominant parameter governing drag, whereas the hole pattern mainly affects local flow structures with limited influence on the integrated force.