- Previous Article
- Next Article
- Table of Contents
Transport in Porous Media, Vol.94, No.2, 595-615, 2012
Pore-Scale Modeling of Viscous Flow and Induced Forces in Dense Sphere Packings
We propose a method for effectively upscaling incompressible viscous flow in large random polydispersed sphere packings: the emphasis of this method is on the determination of the forces applied on the solid particles by the fluid. Pore bodies and their connections are defined locally through a regular Delaunay triangulation of the packings. Viscous flow equations are upscaled at the pore level, and approximated with a finite volume numerical scheme. We compare numerical simulations of the proposed method to detailed finite element simulations of the Stokes equations for assemblies of 8-200 spheres. A good agreement is found both in terms of forces exerted on the solid particles and effective permeability coefficients.