Simulation of fluid dynamics through complicated networks of channels with cellular automata

Abstract

To simulate the behavior of a liquid flowing through complicated regions of channels and porous media, we propose to simplify the problem using cellular automata (CA) simulation, in order to study qualitatively the behavior of the fluid dynamics. CA allows us to work with complicated border conditions by simply considering, or not, a particular cell to be part of the fluid flow. The fluid flow in the CA is achieved by setting the following rules of behavior: it is considered that the movement of fluid particles can only be due to gravity (vertically) and/or horizontally (for space availability) using probability values; upward movements can only be due to the balance of hydrostatic pressure outside the framework of CA; also, the particles will not be able to move to spaces already occupied by the fluid or spaces that form the walls of the structure. It was further possible to simulate the simultaneous behavior of two fluids of different density that cannot be mixed due to the programming simplicity of CA. Several case studies are discussed.