Computational modeling of transport in porous media using an adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system

This investigation is conducted to study the integration of the artificial intelligence (AI) method with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The case study is hydrodynamic and heat-transfer analyses of water flow in a metal foam tube under a constant wall heat flux (i.e., 55 kW/m2 ). The adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is an AI method. A 3D CFD model is established in ANSYS-FLUENT software. The velocity of the fluid in the x-direction (Ux) is considered as an output of the ANFIS. The x, y, and z coordinates of the node’s location are added to the ANFIS step-by-step to achieve the best intelligence. The number and type of membership functions (MFs) are changed in each step. The training process is done by the CFD results on the tube cross-sections at different lengths (i.e., z = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, and 0.9), while all data (including z = 0.5) are selected for the testing process. The results showed that the ANFIS reaches the best intelligence with all three inputs, five MFs, and “gbellmf”-type MF. At this condition, the regression number is close to 1.