Computing and Comparing Effective Properties for Flow and Transport in Computer-Generated Porous Media
We compute effective properties (i.e., permeability, hydraulic tortuosity, and diffusive tortuosity) of three different digital porous media samples, including in-line array of uniform shapes, staggered-array of squares, and randomly distributed squares. The permeability and hydraulic tortuosity are...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wiley
2017-01-01
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| Series: | Geofluids |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2017/4517259 |
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| Summary: | We compute effective properties (i.e., permeability, hydraulic tortuosity, and diffusive tortuosity) of three different digital porous media samples, including in-line array of uniform shapes, staggered-array of squares, and randomly distributed squares. The permeability and hydraulic tortuosity are computed by solving a set of rescaled Stokes equations obtained by homogenization, and the diffusive tortuosity is computed by solving a homogenization problem given for the effective diffusion coefficient that is inversely related to diffusive tortuosity. We find that hydraulic and diffusive tortuosity can be quantitatively different by up to a factor of ten in the same pore geometry, which indicates that these tortuosity terms cannot be used interchangeably. We also find that when a pore geometry is characterized by an anisotropic permeability, the diffusive tortuosity (and correspondingly the effective diffusion coefficient) can also be anisotropic. This finding has important implications for reservoir-scale modeling of flow and transport, as it is more realistic to account for the anisotropy of both the permeability and the effective diffusion coefficient. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-8115 1468-8123 |