Influence of wall roughness on two-phase displacement

Abstract

In the development of oil and gas fields, water flooding is still the most important development method. The influence of the existence of rough channel on two-phase flow cannot be ignored. To study the flow of oil-water two-phase in rough channel, the method of solving Navier-Stokes (N-S) equation directly is used to simulate the displacement process of two-phase fluid in a single rough channel, and the phase field method is used to trace the interface of two-phase fluid in real time. The effects of a series of factors, such as relative roughness height, horizontal roughness unit clearance ratio, viscosity ratio, and so on, on the displacement velocity and the length of two-phase interface are studied by establishing a simple and regular rough channel model. By establishing a smooth channel model as a control experiment, the overall effect of wall roughness on two-phase displacement is studied. Finally, the complex rough channel model is established to verify the correctness of the law obtained by the simple model. The results show that the existence of wall roughness will greatly increase the two-phase flow resistance, promote the occurrence of fingering problem, and reduce the displacement efficiency.