Anisotropy of flow in stochastically generated porous media

Universal scaling for the permeability of random packs of overlapping and nonoverlapping particles

Constraining fluid permeability in porous media is central to a wide range of theoretical, industrial, and natural processes. In this Letter, we validate a scaling for fluid permeability in random and lattice packs of spheres and show that the permeability of packs of both hard and overlapping spheres of any sphere size or size distribution collapse to a universal curve across all porosity ϕ in the range of ϕ_{c}<ϕ<1, where ϕ_{c} is the percolation threshold. We use this universality to demonstrate that permeability can be predicted using percolation theory at ϕ_{c}<ϕ≲0.30, Kozeny-Carman models at 0.30≲ϕ≲0.40, and dilute expansions of Stokes theory for lattice models at ϕ≳0.40. This result leads us to conclude that the inverse specific surface area, rather than an effective sphere size or pore size is a universal controlling length scale for hydraulic properties of packs of spheres. Finally, we extend this result to predict the permeability for some packs of concave nonspherical particles.

Permeability of packs of polydisperse hard spheres

The permeability of packs of spheres is important in a wide range of physical scenarios. Here, we create numerically generated random periodic domains of spheres that are polydisperse in size and use lattice-Boltzmann simulations of fluid flow to determine the permeability of the pore phase interstitial to the spheres. We control the polydispersivity of the sphere size distribution and the porosity across the full range from high porosity to a close packing of spheres. We find that all results scale with a Stokes permeability adapted for polydisperse sphere sizes. We show that our determination of the permeability of random distributions of spheres is well approximated by models for cubic arrays of spheres at porosities greater than ∼0.38, without any fitting parameters. Below this value, the Kozeny-Carman relationship provides a good approximation for dense, closely packed sphere packs across all polydispersivity.

Power-exponential velocity distributions in disordered porous media

Velocity distribution functions link the micro- and macro-level theories of fluid flow through porous media. Here we study them for the fluid absolute velocity and its longitudinal and lateral components relative to the macroscopic flow direction in a model of a random porous medium. We claim that all distributions follow the power-exponential law controlled by an exponent γ and a shift parameter u_{0} and examine how these parameters depend on the porosity. We find that γ has a universal value 1/2 at the percolation threshold and grows with the porosity, but never exceeds 2.

Hyperbolic regions in flows through three-dimensional pore structures

Finite time Lyapunov exponents are used to determine expanding, contracting, and hyperbolic regions in computational simulations of laminar steady-state fluid flows within realistic three dimensional pore structures embedded within an impermeable matrix. These regions correspond approximately to pores where flow converges (contraction) or diverges (expansion), and to throats between pores where the flow mixes (hyperbolic). The regions are sparse and disjoint from one another, occupying only a small percentage of the pore space. Nonetheless, nearly every percolating fluid particle trajectory passes through several hyperbolic regions indicating that the effects of in-pore mixing are distributed throughout an entire pore structure. Furthermore, the observed range of fluid dynamics evidences two scales of heterogeneity within each of these flow fields. There is a larger scale that affects dispersion of fluid particle trajectories across the connected network of pores and a relatively small scale of nonuniform distributions of velocities within an individual pore.