A Quantitative Technique to Compare Experimental Observations and Numerical Simulations of Percolation in Thin Porous Materials

• Published in: Transport in porous media Vol. 115; no. 3; pp. 435 - 447
• Main Authors: Médici, Ezequiel F., Allen, Jeffrey S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-12-2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Capillary flow; Civil Engineering; Classical and Continuum Physics; Computer simulation; Contact angle; Drainage; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Energy dissipation; Experiments; Flow distribution; Flow velocity; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Hydrogeology; Hydrology/Water Resources; Imbibition; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Initial conditions; Intrusion; Material properties; Mathematical models; Morphology; Percolation; Pore size distribution; Porosity; Porous materials; Porous media; Quantitative analysis; Simulation; Surface treatment; Two dimensional models; Ultrasonic testing; Drainage; Pore network model; Scaling; Hele-Shaw; Thin porous materials
• ISSN: 0169-3913; 1573-1634
• DOI: 10.1007/s11242-016-0672-4

Quantitative validation of numerical simulations of percolation in porous media has always been challenging due to the stochastic nature of the material structure and morphology regardless of the numerical technique being used. In this article, we present a technique that allows for a quantitative comparison between numerical and experimental percolation. The experimental observations are of injection pressure and liquid intrusion within thin porous materials in a Hele-Shaw style test. The thin porous materials tested had a surface treatment such the contact angle was larger than
90
∘
resulting drainage percolation. Flow rates were adjusted to encompass the range of capillary numbers for drainage flow patterns between the stable displacement and capillary fingering. In parallel to the experimental observations, a series of numerical simulations using a two-dimensional pore network model were performed mimicking the Hele-Shaw experiments. The material properties of the pore network realizations, pore size distribution, contact angle, and representative volume for the pore space were based on measurements of the porous materials tested. Boundary and initial conditions were matched between numerical simulations and experiments. To compare and validate the numerical simulation against the experiments, a new scaling of the dissipated energy during percolation in thin porous media was used. This scaling has been recently used to identify the transition between capillary fingering and stable displacement for drainage in different thin porous materials and provides a unique method for characterizing percolation in thin porous materials. Though the experiments and simulations presented in this article are for drainage, the technique described is equally applicable to imbibition. Excellent agreement is obtained between experiment and simulation with clear delineation between different types of thin porous materials.