Flow near porous media boundaries including inertia and slip: A one-domain approach

Abstract

This work addresses the macroscopic modeling of flow near porous media boundaries. This includes the vicinity with a fluid channel (i.e., a fracture), another rigid porous medium, or an impervious non-deformable solid. The analysis is carried out for one-phase, steady, incompressible, inertial, and isothermal flow of a Newtonian fluid, considering slip effects at the solid–fluid interfaces. A one-domain approach is proposed, employing a simplified version of the volume averaging method, while conceiving the system as two homogeneous regions separated by an inter-region. The upscaling procedure yields a closed macroscopic model including a divergence-free average (filtration) velocity for the mass balance equation and a unique momentum equation having a Darcy structure. The latter involves apparent permeability tensors that are constant in the homogeneous regions and position-dependent in the inter-region. All the permeability tensors are determined from the solution of coupled closure problems that are part of the developments. The derived model is validated by comparisons with direct numerical simulations in several two-dimensional configurations, namely, two porous media of contrasted properties in direct contact or separated by a fracture, the boundaries being either flat or wavy and a porous medium in contact with a flat or corrugated solid wall or separated from the latter by a fluid layer. The simplicity and versatility of the derived model make it an interesting alternative to existing one- and two-domain approaches developed so far.