Macroscopic laws for immiscible two-phase flow in porous media: results from numerical experiments

Abstract

Flow through porous media may be described at either of two length scales. At the scale of a single pore, fluids flow according to the Navier-Stokes equations and the appropriate boundary conditions. At a larger, volume-averaged scale, the flow is usually thought to obey a linear Darcy law relating flow rates to pressure gradients and body forces via phenomenological permeability coefficients. The situation is considerably different, however, for the simultaneous flow of two or more fluids: not only are the phenomenological coefficients poorly understood, but the form of the macroscopic laws themselves is subject to question. I describe a numerical study of immiscible two-phase flow in an idealized two-dimensional porous medium constructed at the pore scale. Results show that the macroscopic flow is a nonlinear function of the applied forces for sufficiently low levels of forcing, but linear thereafter. The crossover, which is not predicted by conventional models, occurs when viscous forces begin to dominate capillary forces. -from Author