In the present study a detailed examination of various porous media models for predicting filtration efficiency and pressure drop of diesel particulate filter (DPF), such as sphere-in-cell and constricted tube models, are attempted. In order for demonstrating their validities of correct estimation on permeability, geometry of property configurations common in commercial cordierite DPFs are correlated to the porous media flow models, and validations of predicted filtration efficiencies due to the use of different unit collectors are made with experiments. The result shows that the porosity, pore size and permeability of cordierite DPF can be successfully correlated by Kuwabara flow field with correction factor of 0.6. The unit collector efficiency predicted by sphere-in-cell model agrees very well with measurements in accumulation mode, whereas that by constricted tube model with significant prediction error.