Filtration Behaviour of Cement-Based Grout in Porous Media

Abstract

Filtration behaviour of cement particles, especially under the high grouting pressure with a rapid grout flow velocity, has a significant effect on the grout injection. However, there have been few studies on this field where the governing equation of this behaviour remains unclear. In the present study, a novel experimental procedure for grout injection was adopted to acquire the spatial and temporal variations in porosity and viscosity of high-speed grout flow in coarse sand. Experimental observations showed that there were dramatic variations in viscosity and porosity during the grout penetration within the first 50 s, suggesting that the high velocity had a significant influence on the distribution of the filtration coefficient. A model based on the Stokes–Brinkman (S–B) equation and advection–filtration equations was established to describe the filtration of grout flow in porous media. Meanwhile, numerical solutions from both the proposed model and traditional Darcy’s law were compared with experimental results. The comparative results showed that the proposed approach can match the laboratory tests well; the analysis indicated that Darcy’s law was unable to properly describe high-speed grout flow in porous media due to the lack of a shear force and the inertial term. Nonuniform filtration behaviour of cement grout flowing in porous media was revealed. Due to the nonuniform distribution of the pore velocity isoline caused by Poiseuille flow, it led to a heterogenous distribution of porosity as well. Parametric studies on the applicability of Darcy’s law and S–B equation for grout flow were discussed, in which an error of less than 10% was calculated when the Reynolds number was less than 2.5.