Trial for Numerical computation of Permeability—Lattice Boltzmann Method

Background

  • Lattice Boltzmann method is a relatively new simulation technique for complex fluid systems. The discrete Boltzmann equation is solved to simulate the flow of a Newtonian fluid with collision models.
  • Permeability (Hydraulic Conductivity) is the property of interest.
  • If we can come up with the numerical results for permeability, we can do two parts of work: (1) correlate 2-point statistics to permeability through PCA and regression analyses (2) correlate structure properties to permeability (propose new equation).

Progess

Generated randomly packed mono-sized structures (Gravitational Sphere Packing Simulation)

Mono-sized Loosely Packed Particles

3-D LBM simulation of flow through one selected volume

A Sample Sub-volume

Quantified velocity and flow rate

Velocity in X-Z plane (Z is the flow direction)

Next Steps

  1. Sample 200 volumes from the microstructure to perform LBM simulation
  2. Convert the lattice units to physical units to obtain permeability for each volume
  3. 2-point spatial statistics

References