Simulation of the discharging process throughout a porous medium initially saturated with fluid

This paper presents the development of a theoretical model and simulation analysis for the discharging process that takes place in a porous medium initially saturated with ink. During the discharging process the porous material provides enough surface area to hold the fluid by capillarity effects. It was found by the numerical solution that the velocity profile through the porous region was uniform and the backpressure had a linear behavior as function of time. A parametric study also revealed that the permeability, void volume and surface tension have a significant effect on the pressure drop. The numerical formulation was validated with experimental data and good agreements were found between both data sets.