Stress Distribution In Flow Through Porous Media

Velocity and stress fields within both structured and random porous media were computed using the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM).[1-2] The structured porous media consisted of spheres packed in simple lattice, body centered cubic lattice, and face centered cubic lattice, respectively. Random porous media consisted of random close packed spheres with 3 different porosities and micro-computer tomography of the Boise sandstone core.[3-4] The permeability values computed from LBM were in agreement with the values found in the literature.[5] The ability to predict stress distribution within a porous medium a priori will not only help in the better design of catalyst particles and packing material in reactors, but also to effectively design nano-particles that can  propagate through the open pore space in enhanced oil recovery applications. The normalized flow-induced stresses observed within various porous media follow a common probability density function, except for the length of the distribution tail. However, the parameters of the functions used to fit the normalized stress distributions are related to the porosity and the crystallinity of the porous media. We quantify such behavior by comparing the distributions and corresponding parameters to the bond-order parameter (to quantify crystallinity) and porosity. Results of such comparisons are presented and compared with the stress distribution in high porosity bio-scaffolds.[6]

 References

[1]        Voronov, R.; VanGordon, S.; Sikavitsas, V. I.; Papavassiliou, D. V., J. Biomech. 43 (2010)  1279.

[2]        Voronov, R. S.; VanGordon, S. B.; Sikavitsas, V. I.; Papavassiliou, D. V., International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids (2010)  10.1002/fld.2369.

[3]        Martys, N. S.; Torquato, S.; Bentz, D. P., Phys. Rev. E 50 (1994)  403.

[4]        Torquato, S.; Truskett, T. M.; Debenedetti, P. G., Phys. Rev. Lett. 84 (2000)  2064.

[5]        Chapman, A. M.; Higdon, J. J. L., Physics of Fluids A: Fluid Dynamics 4 (1992)  2099.

[6]        Voronov, R. S.; VanGordon, S. B.; Sikavitsas, V. I.; Papavassiliou, D. V., Appl. Phys. Lett. 97 (2010)  024101.