H23I-08
Pore-Scale Modeling of Flow in Porous Media Using Pore Topology Method: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Tuesday, 15 December 2015: 15:25
3016 (Moscone West)
M. Sadegh Riasi1, Nikhil Kumar Palakurthi2, Carlo Montemagno3 and Lilit Yeghiazarian1, (1)Department of Biomedical, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States, (2)Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, , University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States, (3)Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Abstract:
Micro-scale modeling of multiphase flow in porous media is critical to characterize porous materials. Several modeling techniques have been implemented to date, but none can be used as a general strategy for all porous media applications due to challenges presented by non-smooth high-curvature and deformable solid surfaces, and by a wide range of pore sizes, porosities and thicknesses.

Recently, we have developed a new micro-scale modeling technique, Pore Topology Method (PTM), to simulate multiphase flow in porous media. The core of PTM is to reduce the complexity of the 3-D void space geometry by working with its medial surface as the solution domain; hence, provides a simple, topologically consistent and fast methodology to simulate multi-phase flow in porous materials. To validate PTM, we implemented a simplified version to simulated quasi-static drainage/imbibition and to compute absolute permeability for a set of isotropic fibrous materials with 25-95% porosities. The results were in excellent agreement with those of currently available numerical approaches. Our current efforts are focused on employing more sophisticated assumptions in quasi-static simulation, and including the solid matrix swelling in PTM simulation.

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