Digitally Reconstructed Porous Media: Transport and Sorption Properties

The basic aim of this work is to present a combination of techniques for the reconstruction of the porous structure and the study of transport properties in porous media. The disordered structure of porous systems like random sphere packing, Vycor glass and North Sea chalk, is represented by three-dimensional binary images. The random sphere pack is generated by a standard ballistic deposition procedure, while the chalk and the Vycor matrices by a stochastic reconstruction technique. The transport properties (Knudsen diffusivity, molecular diffusivity and permeability) of the resulting 3-dimensional binary domains are investigated through computer simulations. Furthermore, physically sound spatial distributions of two phases filling the pore space are determined by the use of a simulated annealing algorithm. The wetting and the non-wetting phases are initially randomly distributed in the pore space and trial-and-error swaps are performed in order to attain the global minimum of the total interfacial energy. The effective diffusivities of the resulting domains are then computed and a parametric study with respect to the pore volume fraction occupied by each phase is performed. Reasonable agreement with available data is obtained in the single- and multi-phase transport cases.     

Accurate Reconstruction of Porous Materials via Stochastic Fusion of Limited Bimodal Microstructural Data

Porous materials such as sandstones have important applications in petroleum engineering and geosciences. An accurate knowledge of the porous microstructure of such materials is crucial for the understanding of their physical properties and performance. Here, we present a procedure for accurate reconstruction of porous materials by stochastically fusing limited bimodal microstructural data including limited-angle X-ray tomographic radiographs and 2D optical micrographs. The key microstructural information contained in the micrographs is statistically extracted and represented using certain lower-order spatial correlation functions associated with the pore phase, and a probabilistic interpretation of the attenuated intensity in the tomographic radiographs is developed. A stochastic procedure based on simulated annealing that generalizes the widely used Yeong–Torquato framework is devised to efficiently incorporate and fuse the complementary bimodal imaging data for accurate microstructure reconstruction. The information content of the complementary microstructural data is systematically investigated using a 2D model system. Our procedure is subsequently applied to accurately reconstruct a variety of 3D sandstone microstructures with a wide range of porosities from limited X-ray tomographic radiographs and 2D optical micrographs. The accuracy of the reconstructions is quantitatively ascertained by directly comparing the original and reconstructed microstructures and their corresponding clustering statistics.     

Transport Properties of Stochastically Reconstructed Porous Media with Improved Pore Connectivity

Results from stochastic reconstruction of porous solids and from a direct comparison of calculated and experimental effective transport properties are presented. Eight porous solids of different microstructures were selected to evaluate the performance of two reconstruction methods based on simulated annealing. The common method was constrained by the two-point probability function and the lineal-path function for the void phase, whilst the constraints of our new method were further supplemented by the lineal-path function for the solid phase and by two adjustable parameters. The new method was capable of reproducing the void and solid phases as large clusters spanning the entire replicas. Non-percolating clusters formed minor volume fractions of both phases. Although the common method reproduced the microstructures quite well, their pore space connectivity was significantly poorer. Therefore, effective permeability, effective ordinary diffusivity, and effective Knudsen diffusivity calculated for the replicas obtained using the new method were always much greater than the same quantities related to the common reconstruction method. For most of the porous solids, values of the effective properties calculated on the basis of the new reconstruction method better matched their experimental counterparts than the corresponding values derived from the microstructures reproduced using the common reconstruction method.     

A Numerical Study of the Distribution of Water in Partially Saturated Porous Rock

The distribution of water and air phases in small blocks of porous sandstone is examined by using a simulated annealing technique that finds the minimum interfacial energy distributions at different saturations. Simulations are based on existing sandstone microstructures that were determined by X-ray microtomography. At low saturations, some of the water is distributed in films along the walls of larger pore spaces, and connects to pendular structures in the crevices and smaller pores. As the amount of water in the pores increases the water films become thicker and pores fill from the pendular structures. The distribution of water voxels in the pore space is examined by calculating interfacial areas, by classifying water voxels as to whether they lie within films or clusters, and by determining the size and distribution of these film clusters. An exponential relationship is found between the fraction of water voxels in the films and the degree of saturation. In addition, the dependency of small-sample electrical conductivity on saturation is examined by using a random walk method.     

An Algorithm for 3D Pore Space Reconstruction from a 2D Image Using Sequential Simulation and Gradual Deformation with the Probability Perturbation Sampler

The construction of a faithful 3D pore space model of a porous medium that could reproduce the macroscopic behavior of that medium is of great interest in various fields including medicine, material science, hydrology and petroleum engineering. A computationally efficient algorithm is developed that uses the probability perturbation method and sequential multiple-point statistics simulations to generate 3D stochastic and equiprobable representations of random porous media when only a 2D thin section image is available. By employing the probability perturbation method as a gradual deformation technique, the pore patterns of a single 2D image are deformed to generate a series of 2D stochastically simulated images. The 3D pore structure is then generated by simply stacking the 2D-simulated images. The quality of the 3D reconstruction is critically dependent on the rate of deformation and a simple general procedure for choosing this parameter is presented. Various criteria such as porosity, two-point auto-correlation function, multiple-point connectivity function, local percolation probability, absolute permeability obtained by lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM), formation factor and two-phase relative permeability calculations are used to validate the results. The method is tested on two random porous solids; Berea Sandstone and synthetic Silica, for which directly measured 3D micro-CT images are available. The stochastically reconstructed 3D pore space preserves the low- and high-order spatial statistics, the macroscopic flow properties and the microstructure of the 3D micro-CT images.     

Calculating the Anisotropic Permeability of Porous Media Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method and X-ray Computed Tomography

A lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is developed in this article in a combination with X-ray computed tomography to simulate fluid flow at pore scale in order to calculate the anisotropic permeability of porous media. The binary 3D structures of porous materials were acquired by X-ray computed tomography at a resolution of a few microns, and the reconstructed 3D porous structures were then combined with the LB model to calculate their permeability tensor based on the simulated velocity field at pore scale. The flow is driven by pressure gradients imposed in different directions. Two porous media, one gas diffusion porous layer used in fuel cells industry and glass beads, were simulated. For both media, we investigated the relationship between their anisotropic permeability and porosity. The results indicate that the LB model is efficient to simulate pore-scale flow in porous media, and capable of giving a good estimate of the anisotropic permeability for both media. The calculated permeability is in good agreement with the measured date; the relationship between the permeability and porosity for the two media is well described by the Kozeny–Carman equation. For the gas diffusion layer, the simulated results showed that its permeability in one direction could be one order of magnitude higher than those in other two directions. The simulation was based on the single-relaxation time LB model, and we showed that by properly choosing the relaxation time, it could give similar results to those obtained using the multiple-relaxation time (MRT) LB method, but with only one third of the computational costs of MRTLB model.     

Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Flow and Heat Transfer in a Three-Dimensional Channel Coupled with Flow Through Porous Structures

This study investigates numerically the turbulent flow and heat transfer characteristics of a T-junction mixing, where a porous media flow is vertically discharged in a 3D fully developed channel flow. The fluid equations for the porous medium are solved in a pore structure level using an Speziale, Sarkar and Gatski turbulence model and validated with open literature data. Overall, two types of porous structures, consisted of square pores, are investigated over a wide range of Reynolds numbers: an in-line and a staggered pore structure arrangement. The flow patterns, including the reattachment length in the channel, the velocity field inside the porous medium as well as the fluctuation velocity at the interface, are found to be strongly affected by the velocity ratio between the transversely interacting flow streams. In addition, the heat transfer examination of the flow domain reveals that the temperature distribution in the porous structure is more uniform for the staggered array. The local heat transfer distributions inside the porous structure are also studied, and the general heat transfer rates are correlated in terms of area-averaged Nusselt number accounting for the effects of Reynolds number, velocity ratio as well as the geometrical arrangement of the porous structures.     

A new stochastic method of reconstructing porous media

We present a new stochastic method of reconstructing porous medium from limited morphological information obtained from two-dimensional micro- images of real porous medium. The method is similar to simulated annealing method in the capability of reconstructing both isotropic and anisotropic structures of multi-phase but differs from the latter in that voxels for exchange are not selected completely randomly as their neighborhood will also be checked and this new method is much simpler to implement and program. We applied it to reconstruct real sandstone utilizing morphological information contained in porosity, two-point probability function and linear-path function. Good agreement of those references verifies our developed method’s powerful capability. The existing isolated regions of both pore phase and matrix phase do quite minor harm to their good connectivity. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is used to compute the permeability of the reconstructed system and the results show its good isotropy and conductivity. However, due to the disadvantage of this method that the connectivity of the reconstructed system’s pore space will decrease when porosity becomes small, we suggest the porosity of the system to be reconstructed be no less than 0.2 to ensure its connectivity and conductivity.     

Time-Dependent Diffusion and Surface-Enhanced Relaxation in Stochastic Replicas of Porous Rock

Understanding the connection between pore structure and NMR behavior of fluid-saturated porous rock is essential in interpreting the results of NMR measurements in the field or laboratory and in establishing correlations between NMR parameters and petrophysical properties. In this paper we use random-walk simulation to study NMR relaxation and time-dependent diffusion in 3D stochastic replicas of real porous media. The microstructures are generated using low-order statistical information (porosity, void–void autocorrelation function) obtained from 2D images of thepore space. Pore size distributions obtained directly by a 3D pore space partitioning method and indirectly by inversion of NMR relaxation data are compared for the first time. For surface relaxation conditions typical of reservoir rock, diffusional coupling between pores of different size is observed to cause considerable deviations between the two distributions. Nevertheless, the pore space correlation length and the size of surface asperity are mirrored in the NMR relaxation data for the media studied. This observation is used to explain the performance of NMR-based permeability correlations. Additionally, the early time behavior of the time-dependent diffusion coefficient is shown to reflect the average pore surface-to-volume ratio. For sufficiently high values of the self-diffusion coefficient, the tortuosity of the pore space is also recovered from the long-time behavior of the time-dependent diffusion coefficient, even in the presence of surface relaxation. Finally, the simulations expose key limitations of the stochastic reconstruction method, and allow suggestions for future development to be made.     

Effect of Mean Network Coordination Number on Dispersivity Characteristics

In this study, we investigate the role of topology on the macroscopic (centimeter scale) dispersion characteristics derived from pore-network models. We consider 3D random porous networks extracted from a regular cubic lattice with coordination number distributed in accordance with real porous structures. We use physically consistent rules including ideal mixing in pore bodies, molecular diffusion, and Taylor dispersion in pore throats to simulate transport at the pore-scale level. Fundamental properties of porous networks are based on statistical distributions of basic parameters. Theoretical calculations demonstrate strong correspondence with data obtained from numerical experiments. For low coordination numbers, we observe normal transport in porous networks. Anomalous effects expressed by tailing in concentration evolution are seen for higher coordination numbers. We find that the mean network coordination number has significant influence on averaged characteristics of porous networks such as geometric and hydraulic dispersivity, while other topological properties are of less significance. We give an explicit formula that describes the decrease of geometric dispersivity with growing mean coordination number. The results demonstrate the importance of network topology for models for flow and transport in porous media.     

A pore scale study on turbulent combustion in porous media

This paper presents pore scale simulation of turbulent combustion of air/methane mixture in porous media to investigate the effects of multidimensionality and turbulence on the flame within the pores of porous media. In order to investigate combustion in the pores of porous medium, a simple but often used porous medium consisting of a staggered arrangement of square cylinders is considered in the present study. Results of turbulent kinetic energy, turbulent viscosity ratio, temperature, flame speed, convective heat transfer and thermal conductivity are presented and compared for laminar and turbulent simulations. It is shown that the turbulent kinetic energy increases from the inlet of burner, because of turbulence created by the solid matrix with a sudden jump or reduction at the flame front due to increase in temperature and velocity. Also, the pore scale simulation revealed that the laminarization of flow occurs after flame front in the combustion zone and turbulence effects are important mainly in the preheat zone. It is shown that turbulence enhances the diffusion processes in the preheat zone, but it is not enough to affect the maximum flame speed, temperature distribution and convective heat transfer in the porous burner. The dimensionless parameters associated with the Borghi–Peters diagram of turbulent combustion have been analyzed for the case of combustion in porous media and it is found that the combustion in the porous burner considered in the present study concerns the range of well stirred reactor very close to the laminar flame region.     

Investigation of porous media combustion by coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy

High efficiency, marginal pollutant emissions and low fuel consumption are desirable standards for modern combustion devices. The porous burner technology is a modern type of energy conversion with a strong potential to achieve these standards. However, due to the solid ceramic framework investigation of the thermodynamic properties of combustion, for example temperature, is difficult. The combustion process inside the ceramic structure of a porous burner was experimentally investigated by coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS). In this work, we present measurements using dual-pump dual-broadband CARS (DP-DBB-CARS) of temperature and species concentrations inside the reaction and flue gas zone of a porous media burner. Improvements to the setup and data evaluation procedure in contrast to previous measurements are discussed in detail. The results at varied thermal power and stoichiometry are presented. In addition, measurements at a range of radial positions inside a pore are conducted and correlated with the solid structure of the porous foam, which was determined by X-ray computer tomography.     

多孔材料中应力波的传播

针对多孔泡沫混凝土实验应力应变曲线的基本特点,提出并建立了一种可以考虑孔隙压实过程的材料本构模型及其数学形式.通过典型算例,分析了应力波在多孔材料中传播的耗散效应,指出多孔材料中的孔隙在被压实过程中能有效吸收应力波能量、降低应力波强度,在引起应力波衰减的诸因素中,孔隙压实所起的作用更大更显著.     

Construction of Dual Pore 3-D Digital Cores with a Hybrid Method Combined with Physical Experiment Method and Numerical Reconstruction Method

In order to further improve the accuracy of digital core modeling, a new hybrid method was proposed to construct the dual pore 3-D digital core with high precision. First of all, 3-D macro-pore digital cores were constructed by micro-CT. Secondly, based on the high-resolution 2-D scanning electron microscopy images of rock cores, micro-pore digital cores were constructed by simulated annealing method. And then, a superposition method was used to construct the digital core which could describe different pore characteristics. Finally, pore structures of digital cores were compared, and lattice Boltzmann method was used to analyze the percolation properties. The results show that the carbonate dual pore digital core constructed by the new hybrid method has a high accuracy, which can capture the pore properties of both macro-pore and micro-pore, and whose permeability simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental measurements. In addition, the new hybrid method is not only accurate and reliable, but also high efficient and economic, and can be applied to all kinds of reservoir modeling.     

A linear dynamic model for a saturated porous medium

A linear isothermal dynamic model for a porous medium saturated by a Newtonian fluid is developed in the paper. In contrast to the mixture theory, the assumption of phase separation is avoided by introducing a single constitutive energy function for the porous medium. An important advantage of the proposed model is it can account for the couplings between the solid skeleton and the pore fluid. The mass and momentum balance equations are obtained according to the generalized mixture theory. Constitutive relations for the stress, the pore pressure are derived from the total free energy accounting for inter-phase interaction. In order to describe the momentum interaction between the fluid and the solid, a frequency independent Biot-type drag force model is introduced. A temporal variable porosity model with relaxation accounting for additional attenuation is introduced for the first time. The details of parameter estimation are discussed in the paper. It is demonstrated that all the material parameters in our model can be estimated from directly measurable phenomenological parameters. In terms of the equations of motion in the frequency domain, the wave velocities and the attenuations for the two P waves and one S wave are calculated. The influences of the porosity relaxation coefficient on the velocities and attenuation coefficients of the three waves of the porous medium are discussed in a numerical example.     

基于声学超材料的穿孔板缺陷态俘能特性研究

论文提出了一套适用于在低频段区间工作的声学超材料俘能装置.通过在含孔的声学超材料结构中制造一个局域共振缺陷态,进而将入射声波的弹性应变能集中在缺陷区域中,并利用压电晶片实现能量的转化.论文采用有限元的方法研究了元胞含孔的声学超材料在共振频率下俘获功率与电压的性能.进一步地,通过逐渐改变孔的尺寸,探究了孔径大小对俘能效果...     

Modelling turbulent and dispersion heat fluxes in turbulent porous medium flows using the resolved LES data

Resolved large eddy simulations (LESs) of turbulent conjugate heat transfer in porous media are performed by the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for modelling turbulent and dispersion heat flux terms of the double-averaged energy equation. The considered porous structures are square rod arrays, staggered cube arrays and body centred cubic foam. In the LBM, the double-distribution function method which solves the distribution functions for the velocity and the internal energy is used. For the velocity and thermal fields, the D3Q27 multiple-relaxation-time method and the regularized D3Q19 single-relaxation-time method are applied, respectively. A priori tests using the LES data suggest that the trends of the sum of the dispersion and volume-averaged turbulent heat fluxes can be well captured by the second order gradient diffusion model.