About the Project
Two phase flows through the porous medium are really abundant, including oil recovery and oil extraction applications, cleaning, drying, and many others. The standard macroscopic approach for description of these flows is based on the extended Darcy’s law, which involves infinite amount of empirical data (the capillary and relative permeability curves are required, i.e. not one parameter, but the whole curves need to be obtained before modelling is possible).
We aim to improve this approach though the multi-scale analysis. First, we will develop a phase-field model for the flow on the pore-scale, microscopic, level. Contrary to the classical network approach, when each network element is characterised by some integral quantities, we will resolve the detailed flow structure throughout the full network. The obtained information will be further averaged in order to provide a macroscopic picture. For this up-scaling analysis, the network approach will be chosen: the void space of porous media is represented as a network of geometrically simplified throats and pores. The characteristics of the throats (e.g. their dimensions) are randomly distributed over the volume. The network calculations are to be done as follows. The flow in an element of the network on the next time step will be obtained by using the boundary profiles from the Two phase flows through the porous medium are really abundant, including oil recovery and oil extraction applications, cleaning, drying, and many others. The standard macroscopic approach for description of these flows is based on the extended Darcy’s law, which involves infinite amount of empirical data (the capillary and relative permeability curves are required, i.e. not one parameter, but the whole curves need to be obtained before modelling is possible).
We aim to improve this approach though the multi-scale analysis. First, we will develop a phase-field model for the flow on the pore-scale, microscopic, level. Contrary to the classical network approach, when each network element is characterised by some integral quantities, we will resolve the detailed flow structure throughout the full network. The obtained information will be further averaged in order to provide a macroscopic picture. For this up-scaling analysis, the network approach will be chosen: the void space of porous media is represented as a network of geometrically simplified throats and pores. The characteristics of the throats (e.g. their dimensions) are randomly distributed over the volume. The network calculations are to be done as follows. The flow in an element of the network on the next time step will be obtained by using the boundary profiles from the neighbouring elements that correspond to the previous-step calculations.
The ultimate aim is to develop a parallel computer code for the network modelling of the two/phase flow through the porous medium. The code will be verified against the basic miscible and immiscible flows.
If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Anatoliy Vorobev, Email: [Email Address Removed], Tel: +44 (0) 2380 598345
This project is run through participation in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling (http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk). For details of our 4 Year PhD programme, please see http://www.findaphd.com/search/PhDDetails.aspx?CAID=331&LID=2652
For a details of available projects click here http://www.ngcm.soton.ac.uk/projects/index.html
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