Numerical investigation of the first transition in the three-dimensional problem of convective flow in a porous medium

The branching off of steady-state regimes from mechanical equilibrium is studied for the problem of filtration convection in a parallelepiped. The conditions for the geometric parameters under which stable continuous families of steady-state regimes develop are found. The stability of equilibria of the family with respect to three-dimensional perturbations is analyzed in a numerical experiment using a finite-difference method.     

Numerical Investigation of the Second Transition in the Problem of Plane Convective Flow through a Porous Medium

The problem of convective flow through a porous medium in a plane rectangular vessel with a linear temperature profile steadily maintained on the boundary is considered. Single-parameter families of steady-state regimes resulting from the existence of cosymmetry of the corresponding differential equations are investigated using the Galerkin method. The onset and development of instability on these families and the characteristics of convective regimes as functions of the seepage Rayleigh number and the rectangle side ratio are studied. It is shown that the number of regimes which lose stability, the instability type, the number of convective rollers developed, and the heat transfer depend significantly on the vessel geometry. Several bifurcations of single-parameter families of steady-state regimes are identified and investigated.     

On the existence of self-similar solutions of the equations governing unsteady flow through a porous medium

In this paper the conditions for the existence of self-similar solutions of the equations governing unsteady flows through a porous medium are presented and discussed. The first two sections deal with the case of non-Newtonian fluids of power-law behavior; the third section analyzes the case of non-Darcy gas flows. The boundary and initial conditions occuring currently in a large class of fluid mechanics problems, of practical interest in engineering, are considered.     

Effect of vibration on the stability of a plane displacement front in a porous medium

The effect of linearly polarized vibration on the stability of a plane displacement front in a porous medium is studied. The problem of the stability of the motion of a plane displacement front traveling at a constant velocity U under the action of vibration normal to the front is considered. It is shown that under the action of vibration the dynamics of the plane displacement front can be described by the Mathieu equation with a dissipative term. Using the standard averaging method, in the case of high-frequency vibration it is revealed that vibration can only increase the stability of the system. It is found that the vibration stabilizes the plane displacement front with respect to part of the perturbation spectrum.     

Self-similar solutions of the problem of formation of a hydraulic fracture in a porous medium

The problem of hydraulic fracture formation in a porous medium is investigated in the approximation of small fracture opening and inertialess incompressible Newtonian fluid fracture flow when the seepage through the fracture walls into the surrounding reservoir is asymptotically small or large. It is shown that the system of equations describing the propagation of the fracture has self-similar solutions of power-law or exponential form only. A family of self-similar solutions is constructed in order to determine the evolution of the fracture width and length, the fluid velocity in the fracture, and the length of fluid penetration into the porous medium when either the fluid flow rate or the pressure as a power-law or exponential function of time is specified at the fracture entrance. In the case of finite fluid penetration into the soil the system of equations has only a power-law self-similar solution, for example, when the fluid flow rate is specified at the fracture entrance as a quadratic function of time. The solutions of the self-similar equations are found numerically for one of the seepage regimes.     

Phase discontinuities in water flows through a porous medium

Flow of a fluid through a porous medium is considered with allowance for heat conduction processes and phase transitions. Discontinuities in flows between both single-phase zones saturated with water and steam and single-and two-phase zones saturated with an equilibrium steam-water mixture are studied. It is shown that only the evaporation fronts are evolutionary for a convex-downward shock adiabat of the discontinuity inside the steam-water mixture. The structure of these fronts is considered and a condition supplementary to the conservation laws and necessary for the well-posed formulation of problems whose solution contains this front is found from the condition of existence of a discontinuity structure between the water (steam) and the steam-water mixture.     

Effect of residual oil saturation on the flow through a porous medium in the neighborhood of an injection well

Models of the residual oil saturation and models of its effect on the flow in injection wells are proposed. The threshold nature of the dependence of the residual oil saturation on the capillary number determines a change in the flow regimes in the neighborhood of the injection well. The cases of pure, contaminated, and compressible reservoirs are considered. The dependences of the basic problem parameters on the displacement conditions and the state of the reservoir are obtained, together with formulas for the pressure distribution and well injectivity. The topicality of such a simulation for field calculations is demonstrated.     

Plane steady-state incompressible fluid flow through a porous medium with a nonlinear resistance laws in the presence of a sink

Plane nonlinear fluid flows through a porous medium which simulate a sink located at the same distance from the roof and floor of the stratum for two nonlinear flow laws are constructed. The following flow laws are taken: a power law and a law of special form reducing to analytic functions in the hodograph plane.     

Magnetohydrodynamics convective flow in a vertical slot through a porous medium

An analysis is presented with magnetohydrodynamics natural convective flow of a viscous Newtonian fluid saturated porous medium in a vertical slot. The flow in the porous media has been modeled using the Brinkman model. The fully-developed two-dimensional flow from capped to open ends is considered for which a continuum of solutions is obtained. The influence of pertinent parameters on the flow is delineated and appropriate conclusions are drawn. The asymptotic behaviour and the volume flux are analyzed and incorporated graphically for the three-parameter family of solution.     

Selection of steady regimes of a one-parameter family in the problem of plane convective flow through a porous medium

Convective flow through a porous medium in a rectangular vessel with a linear temperature profile steadily maintained on the boundary is investigated. On the basis of numerical experiments the realization of steady regimes that belong to a globally stable, one-parameter family is studied at different vessel dimensions and initial temperature distributions. The regime selection is shown to strongly depend on the initial fluid temperature: a vicinity of two regimes is realized from initial data similar with the state of rest; at high initial fluid heating the regimes are selected from a vicinity of two other regimes; and in intermediate situations any of infinite number of steady regimes can be attained.     

Problem of propagation of a gas fracture in a porous medium

The problem of gas fracture formation in a porous medium is investigated. An inertialess viscous polytropic gas flow along the fracture is considered. The assumption of small fracture width with respect to the height and length makes it possible to adopt the vertical plane cross-section hypothesis on the basis of which the dependence of the gas pressure inside the fracture on its width can be reduced to a linear law. Initially, the soil surrounding the fracture is soaked with oil-bearing fluid. During fracturing the reservoir gas penetrates into the soil mass and displaces the fluid. A closed system of equations, which describes the evolution of the fracture opening, the depth of gas penetration into the reservoir, and the gas velocities inside the fracture, is constructed. The limiting regimes of gas seepage into the surrounding reservoir are considered and a one-parameter family of self-similar solutions of the system is given for each. The asymptotics of the solution in the neighborhood of the fracture nose is investigated and analytic expressions for the fracture length are obtained. The solution of the problem of gas fracture is compared with the hydraulic fracturing problem in an analogous formulation within the framework of the plane cross-section hypothesis.     

Correlations between porous medium flow data and turbulent tube flow results for aqueous hydroxypropylguar solutions (Part 2)

Turbulent tube flow and the flow through a porous medium of aqueous hydroxypropylguar (HPG) solutions in concentrations from 100 wppm to 5000 wppm is investigated. Taking the rheological flow curves into account reveals that the effectiveness in turbulent tube flow and the efficiency for the flow through a porous medium both start at the same onset wall shear stress of 1.3 Pa. The similarity of the curves = ( _w ) and = ( _w ), respectively, leads to a simple linear relation / =k, where the constantk or proportionality depends uponc. This offers the possibility to deduce (for turbulent tube flow) from (for flow through a porous medium). In conjunction with rheological data, will reveal whether, and if yes to what extent, drag reduction will take place (even at high concentrations).The relation of our treatment to the model-based Deborah number concept is shown and a scale-up formula for the onset in turbulent tube flow is deduced as well.     

Three dimensional unsteady convection and mass transfer flow through porous medium

The problem of three dimensional unsteady convection flow through a porous medium, with effect of mass transfer bounded by an infinite vertical porous plate is discussed, when the suction at the plate is transverse sinusoidal and the plate temperature oscillates in time about a constant mean. Assuming the free stream velocity to be uniform, approximate solutions are obtained for the flow field, the temperature field, the skin-friction and the rate of heat transfer. The dependence of solution on Pr (Prandtl number), Gr (Grashof number based on temperature), Gc (modified Grashof number based on concentration difference), Sc (Schimdt number), the frequency and the permeability parameter is also investigated.     

Unsteady one-dimensional water and steam flows through a porous medium with allowance for phase transitions

Fluid flow through a porous medium is considered with allowance for heat conduction and phase transition processes. The one-dimensional problem of the breakdown of an arbitrary discontinuity is solved with reference to the processes of combined nonisothermal water and steam flow through the porous medium. It is assumed that there are two-phase zones of water and steam flow through the porous medium to the left and right of the initial discontinuity. Six qualitatively different discontinuous solutions with internal single-phase water or steam zones are constructed and domains corresponding to each of the solutions are found in the determining parameter space. For the parameters considered a solution of the breakdown problem exists and is unique when the requirements for the existence of a discontinuity structure are satisfied [{xc1}].     

Compressibility and anisotropy effects in the processes of two-phase flow through a porous medium

Functions of the relative phase permeabilities which take into account the tensor nature of the relations between the absolute and phase permeabilities are constructed on the basis of experimental data. Problems of the displacement of gas by water and of water by gas in an orthotropic pore space are studied. The relative phase permeabilities obtained are compared with functions that depend only on the local saturation. The effect of the phase compressibility and the anisotropy of the absolute permeability tensor is considered.     

Properties of certain phase transition fronts in geothermal porous reservoirs

The properties of equilibrium steam-water mixture — water(steam) phase transition fronts in porous heat-conducting media are investigated in the one-dimensional formulation. The number of necessary boundary conditions on the front (evolutionarity), the direction of propagation of the front with respect to the porous medium, the type of phase transition (evaporation or condensation), and the thermodynamic contradiction in the zone occupied by the pure phase (water or steam) are determined as functions of the parameters of the medium.Translated from Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Academii Nauk, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 6, 2004, pp. 133–144. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Kondrashov.     

Variational principles of time-dependent fluid flows through porous media with discontinuous reservoir properties

The use of variational principles as the initial basis for constructing continuum models was investigated by Sedov and his disciples. In this study the variational formalism is developed for calculating time-dependent fluid flows through porous and fractured-porous media with inhomogeneous, discontinuous, and, in particular, piecewise-constant properties. It is proved that, in the case of a medium with discontinuous properties, from the basic variational relation W = 0 there follows not only the differential equations of the flow models but also the conditions on the surfaces of discontinuity of the reservoir properties. This clears the way for the generalization and effective use of direct variational methods for calculating flow fields in complex-structure reservoirs. The methods proposed are illustrated by particular examples.Translated from Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Academii Nauk, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 6, 2004, pp. 115–123.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Volnitskaya.