Sharif Digital Repository

Continuous approximation of pressure and flux fields is one of main goals of simulating flow in porous media. To compute the pressure field in heterogeneous and anisotropic media using minimum memory and time, it is necessary to use a conservative flux-continuous scheme. Nowadays, one of the most efficient approaches to minimize the solving time of large-scale problems is parallel computing. In this research, a parallel algorithm for flux-continuous multi-point flux approximation (MPFA) scheme with full pressure support (FPS) is designed and implemented on unstructured triangular grids by cell-centered approach. In this work, 2D single phase flows are investigated. The results are presented... 

Study of two-phase flowin porous media forms a basis for investigating various fluid systemsin the nature and industries. In recent years, more and more researchers use pore-scale mod-els to explore various physical phenomena occurring in complex media such as hydrocarbonreservoirs. After solving the flow equations in pore-scale, this approach can be utilized tocalculate some macroscopic values using particular forms of averaged flow field.In this research, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is used to simulate two-phaseflow in pore spaces of two- and three-dimensional porous media. The SPH method is a La-grangian meshless method that is suitable for flows with free surfaces, deformable... 

In the present work, numerical simulation of cross-flow microfiltration of non-alcoholic beer in a tubular membrane has been studied. Finite element analysis was used as a powerful tool for simulation. The feed stream, which flows mainly tangentially to the porous membrane surface, is modeled by the Navier-Stokes equations. Porous wall conditions are described by the Darcy equation that relates the pressure gradient within a flow stream to the flow rate through the permeable wall. A pilot-scale cross-flow membrane filter was developed to verify the model results. Ceramic tubular membranes were used in this study. The cross-flow velocity of the feed solution was controlled at the laminar... 

One of the most important issues in the petroleum industry, is how to increase the oil production from hydrocarbon reservoirs. The optimum design of an enhanced oil recovery process needs the knowledge on the physical phenomena of the working flow in oil reservoirs. An important aspect of any oil recovery process is the effectiveness of process fluid in removing oil from the rock pores at microscopic scales, in a way that it determines the success or failure of the recovery process. Meanwhile, one of the most important factors on the fluid mobility and as a result the microscopic mobility efficiency is the pressure difference between different phases in narrow paths of porous media. This... 

In recent years, pore network modeling has been used to predict various characteristics of porous media from capillary pressure to heat and mass transfer coefficients. In pore network modeling, the void space of a rock sample is represented at the microscopic scale by a network of pores connected by throats. Construction of a reasonable representation of the geometry and topology of the pore space will lead to a reliable prediction of the properties of porous media. In this thesis, a new approach for the construction of pore network models is proposed. This approach is based on the theory of multi-cellular growth simulation, or L-systems. In order to show the capabilities of this approach,... 

To investigate the role of biological processes in bacterial transport through poroud media, six rod shaped and motile bacteria were isolated from a crude oil sample. A multi stage screening procedure was utilized to select the most appropriate isolate in microbial enhanced oil recovery applications (MEOR). It was identified and registered as Bacillus licheniformis MS3 in GenBank database. After that, the physical properties and chemical structure of its biosurfactant were determined and it was proved to be a new lipopeptide biosurfactant which was called licheniformin. Power law logistic model was utilized to investigate the kinetics growth of the MS3 strain on insoluble carbon sources ... 

Development of pore network models for real porous media requires a detailed understanding of physical processes occurring on the microscopic scale and a complete description of porous media morphology. In this study, the microstructure of porous media has been represented by three dimensional networks of interconnected pores and throats which are designed by an object oriented approach. Afterwards, the connectivity of the system has been optimized by an optimization algorithm. To validate the methodology, a network of a carbonate sample is constructed. In this model, the geometrical characteristics of the pores and throats, such as their shapes, effective radii and lengths, are selected... 

Modeling the water flow in cohesive fracture is a fundamental issue in the crack growth simulation of cracked concrete gravity dams and hydraulic fracture problems. Discontinuities in porous materials such as concrete, soil and rock have important role on the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of a multiphase system. The creation and propagation of discontinuities, such as cracks in a multi-physics system, lead to a complex non-linear coupled problem with continuous topological changes in the domain.In this study, a mathematical model is presented for for the analysis of dynamic fracture propagation in the saturated and semi-saturated porous media. The solid behavior incorporates a discrete... 

In this work, a new methodology for modeling the whole lung using porous media is presented. Dealing with the details of the proposed method establishes the need for some tools. Proposed method combines data extraction from lung images to identify large airways, porosity and porous region boundaries. Combining some sequential images, change in properties with time could be obtained. To obtain behavior of this porous media with respect to flow, a method based on the classification of bifurcations and gas exchange areas and pore scale modeling of these classes is proposed. All these require a specifically designed numerical tool. Development of this tool is the subject of the next parts of... 

Lamniar flow through porous media has been investigated using finite volume staggered grid. In order to study turbulent flow modelling turbulent flow using RANS models with the aid of Fluent software has been done. And the microscopic and macroscopic results are compared with LES results. None of the RANS models used (k-e, RNG, k-wv2f, v2f and RSM) were able to model the flow through porous media properly, although k-e and RSM gave the best microscopic and macroscopic results  

A genetic-based pore network extraction method from micro-CT images is proposed in this work. Several variables such as the number, radius and location of pores, the coordination number, as well as the radius and length of the throats are used herein as the optimization parameters. Two methods are presented for modeling the pore network structure. Unlike the previous models, these methods are directly based on minimizing the error between the extracted network and the real porous medium. This leads to the generation of more accurate results while reducing required computational memories. Two different objective functions are used in building the network. In the first method, only the... 

Fluid flow in porous media is a common phenomenon in the nature, in many fields of science and engineering such as flow of water in the soil, migration of contaminants in the soil, petroleum reservoir engineering, semi?olten magma flow in the crust, water flow in plants, blood flow in body tissues, etc. In many cases, the porous structure of the medium and fluid flow pattern are very complex because of the inherent problems of fluidAluid and fluidsolid interactions. Also, secondary issues such as intrinsic permeability and tortuosity of porous media, and relative permeability of two phase flow, increase the complication of the analyses. Studying these types of phenomena in the nature or even... 

In this work a generalized non-equilibrium model of three-phase flow in porous media including gravity as well as capillary terms is developed and used for analysis of Riemann’s problem in several three-phase systems. The proposed model uses the extension of Barenblatt model to three-phase systems considering dynamic effects in both relative permeability and capillary pressure functions. We compare the solution of the Riemann’s problem when non-equilibrium effects are included. While equilibrium formulation develops unstable oscillatory solution in the elliptic region, non-equilibrium solution is smooth and stable. The proposed non-equilibrium model is validated by the experimental data of... 

Heat transfer enhancement in heat transfer equipment, such as heat exchangers, has been widely studied. There are plenty of techniques to increase heat transfer in tubular heat exchangers. One of these techniques is applying a porous medium. These media have a great interface with fluids which can enhance the heat transfer rate. Meanwhile, the thermal conductivity of these media is usually greater than that of the studied fluid. Thus, by adding a kind of highly conductive porous insert to a heat exchanger, we are able to save the material used to construct the device and the space occupied by it.
Shell-and-tube heat exchangers are one of the most widely-used types of exchangers in... 

Laminar forced convection flow through a channel partially filled with a porous material was numerically studied in this thesis. The Navier-Stokes and Brinkman-Forchheimer equations were used to model the fluid flow in the free and porous regions, respectively. Coupling of the pressure and velocity fields was resolved using the SIMPLEC algorithm. The local thermal equilibrium was adopted in the energy equation. The effects of the thermal conductivity ratio, Darcy number, porosity, Reynolds number and height of the porous insert on velocity and temperature field were investigated. The results show that the flow behavior and its associated heat transfer are susceptible to the variation of the... 

In this thesis, the momentum and heat transfer of a ferrofluid in a partially filled vertical porous channel under the influence of nonuniform magnetic field has been investigated. In this magneto-thermo-echanical problem, our objective was to enhance the heat transfer which is attributable to both ferrofluid and porous medium unique characteristics. Accordingly, this problem is twofold and their relevant aspects would be discussed respectively. The ferrofluid flows upward, in the channel and a gradient magnetic field is generated by a permanent magnet in the vicinity of the channel. To solve the system of govering equations,COMSOL Multiphysics software has been used. The results shows that... 

The main purpose of this work is investigation of coolability of a boiling debris bed. The main governing equations are derived using volume averaging technique. From this technique some specific interfacial areas between phases are appeared and proper relations for modeling these areas are proposed. Using these specific areas, a modification for the Tung/Dhir model in the annular flow regime is proposed. The proposed modification is validated and the agreements with experimental data are good. Finally, governing equations and relations are implemented in the THERMOUS program to model two-phase flow in the debris bed in the axisymmetric cylindrical coordinate. Two typical configurations... 

Porous medium is a material consisting of a solid matrix with an interconnected void. A polymer is a large molecule composed of many repeated subunits, known as monomers; Polyurethane is a type of polymer which has many uses. The aim of this research project is to investigate the effective factors in polyurethane polymer injection and the behavior of this material during the foaming in cavities with different soil porosities (0.15 < φ < 0.4). Parameters such as thermal boundary conditions and the soil material that could be effective in solidification of polyurethane are analyzed, numerically using FLUENT software. A simplified model for foaming is presented in this study which can be used... 

Investigation of reservoir performance and long-term production prediction are main goal of numerical simulation. Numerical simulation mainly consists of solving sets of non-linear equations developed by combination of continuity equation, equation of state and Darcy equation. Classical methods such as finite difference method (FDM), finite volume method (FVM) and finite element method (FEM) are widely used for solving sets of fluid flow equations that mentioned above. Researchers have used other methods like boundary element method recently. Each of these methods has their own restrictions. But the main source of error in these methods is due to numerical estimation of spatial derivatives...