Flow in binary porous media: viscous dissipation

COLECCHIO PUA I; A. BOSCHAN; NOETINGER B; A. OTERO

Album of Porous Media: Structure and Dynamics

Springer Nature

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2022;

Flow and transport in porous media strongly dependon the connectivity of the high permeability component.Frequently, small critical regions determine theoverall flow behavior. Energy dissipation approachesmake it possible to detect these regions, yielding moreaccurate effective properties[1].We’ve simulated flow in a synthetic binary medium(b) with a high conductivity (khigh = 100m/day) anda low one (klow = 0.01m/day). No-flow boundary conditionsare applied in the vertical boundaries whilea pressure gradient exists between the inlet (bottom)and the outlet (top). The resulting energy dissipationsmaps are shown in (a) (with khigh: , klow : ), and in(c) (with khigh: , klow : ). Zooms over a small criticalregion are shown in the bottom row (d, e, f).When khigh paths connect inlet and outlet (i.e. whenpercolation of the khigh component occurs) energydissipation is distributed mostly along flow channels(a, d). Otherwise, channelization is absent and energydissipation is distributed along barriers (c, f).