Possibilities of porous-structure representation – an overview

Abstract

Porous media can be found in all areas of scientific life, such as medicine, civil engineering, material science, fluid dynamics. Computing has achieved high efficiency and computational capacity – so far. However, three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of microstructure remain significant challenges. Pore-scale simulations can help understand the physical processes and determine macroscopic parameters such as the high-frequency limit of dynamic tortuosity, viscous, and thermal characteristic lengths. Independent of whether the computational problem is two or three-dimensional, the geometry as input parameter must be prepared. For this reason, geometry representation methods play a crucial role in the analysis at the pore-scale, especially in numerical simulations. In this article, an insight into microstructures’ visualization capabilities is provided essentially for CFD simulations.