Numerical Calculation of the Pressure Drop and Saturation of Two-Phase Flow Through Porous Medium

Abstract

Abstract Two-phase flow through a fibrous porous medium is numerically simulated. The goal of the study is to investigate the effect of numerical slip length on variation of pressure drop and saturation. The simulation is based on the numerical solution of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for two-phase flow around a circular cylinder with radii in the ranges from 0.1 to 0.4. Variations of pressure drop and saturation in time are numerically calculated on simple and snap meshes for different values of surface tension (σ), viscosity ratio (M = μnw/μw), and mesh sizes. Also, numerical results using simple and snap meshes are compared. Numerical calculations are performed using the interFoam solver in OpenFOAM® finite volume library. The presented results show that solutions of saturation and pressure drop in time vary with mesh refinement, so the numerical slip length significantly affects the flow. For a coarser mesh the influence of numerical slip length is less than for a finer mesh, also as bigger the value of the viscosity ratio or surface tension as lower the influence of numerical slip length. The results show that the contact line motion significantly depends not only on the microstructure of the porous media, but also on the fluid properties (viscosity ratio, surface tension and etc.).