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A model for two‐phase flow in porous media including fluid‐fluid interfacial area
Author(s) -
Niessner J.,
Hassanizadeh S. M.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/2007wr006721
Subject(s) - porous medium , capillary pressure , constitutive equation , relative permeability , mechanics , fluid dynamics , permeability (electromagnetism) , capillary action , two phase flow , flow (mathematics) , darcy's law , materials science , porosity , saturation (graph theory) , thermodynamics , geotechnical engineering , mathematics , geology , physics , chemistry , finite element method , biochemistry , combinatorics , membrane
We present a new numerical model for macroscale two‐phase flow in porous media which is based on a physically consistent theory of multi‐phase flow. The standard approach for modeling the flow of two fluid phases in a porous medium consists of a continuity equation for each phase, an extended form of Darcy's law as well as constitutive relationships for relative permeability and capillary pressure. This approach is known to have a number of important shortcomings and, in particular, it does not account for the presence and role of fluid‐fluid interfaces. The alternative is to use an extended model, which is founded on thermodynamic principles and is physically consistent. In addition to the standard equations, the model uses a balance equation for specific interfacial area. The constitutive relationship for capillary pressure involves not only saturation, but also specific interfacial area. We present results of a numerical modeling study based on this extended model. We show that the extended model can capture additional physical processes compared to the standard model, such as hysteresis.