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- Title
Lattice Boltzmann Simulation of Immiscible Displacement in Porous Media: Viscous Fingering in a Shear-Thinning Fluid.
- Authors
Wang, Menghao; Xiong, Youming; Liu, Liming; Peng, Geng; Zhang, Zheng
- Abstract
In this work, we investigate immiscible displacement in porous media with the displaced fluid being shear-thinning. We focus on the influence the heterogeneous viscosity field in the shear-thinning fluid brings on viscous fingering, which has received little attention in the existing researches. Lattice Boltzmann simulations of immiscible displacement with a power law model implementation in the displaced fluid are conducted. The lattice Boltzmann algorithm is validated against Newtonian and non-Newtonian flows in a channel. The effects of the shear-thinning property and the viscosity heterogeneity on viscous fingering are considered in the simulations. The results show that with stronger shear-thinning property (lower power law exponent n), there is stronger viscosity heterogeneity in the displaced fluid, and the viscous fingering shows weaker instability. The influence of a heterogeneous viscosity field on viscous fingering is dominated by the viscosity in the low-viscosity regions, while the high-viscosity regions show little influence. The influence of the local viscosity on viscous fingering is dependent upon the local shear rate. A concept of 'effective field viscosity' is introduced to quantitatively characterize a heterogeneous viscosity field. A shear rate weighted averaging algorithm is proposed to calculate the effective field viscosity from a heterogeneous viscosity field. The algorithm is tested in several cases and shows good performance to represent the influence of the heterogeneous viscosity field.
- Subjects
IMMISCIBILITY; POROUS materials; PSEUDOPLASTIC fluids; LATTICE Boltzmann methods; COMPUTER simulation
- Publication
Transport in Porous Media, 2019, Vol 126, Issue 2, p411
- ISSN
0169-3913
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11242-018-1162-7