Upscaled Lattice Boltzmann Method for simulations of flows in heterogeneous porous media

Jun, Li; Brown, D.L.

Abstract

An upscaled Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for flow simulations in heterogeneous porous media at the Darcy scale is proposed in this paper. In the Darcy scale simulations, the Shan-Chen force model is used to simplify the algorithm. The proposed upscaled LBM uses coarser grids to represent the average effects of the fine-grid simulations. In the upscaled LBM, each coarse grid represents a subdomain of the fine-grid discretization and the effective permeability with the reduced-order models is proposed as we coarsen the grid. The effective permeability is computed using solutions of local problems (e.g., by performing local LBM simulations on the fine grids using the original permeability distribution) and used on the coarse grids in the upscaled simulations. The upscaled LBM that can reduce the computational cost of existing LBM and transfer the information between different scales is implemented. The results of coarse-grid, reduced-order, simulations agree very well with averaged results obtained using a fine grid.

Citation

Jun, L., & Brown, D. (2017). Upscaled Lattice Boltzmann Method for simulations of flows in heterogeneous porous media. Geofluids, 2017, Article 1740693. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1740693

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 5, 2017
• Publication Date: Feb 16, 2017
• Deposit Date: Mar 23, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 23, 2017
• Journal: Geofluids
• Print ISSN: 1468-8115
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-8123
• Publisher: Hindawi Publishing Corporation
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2017
• Article Number: 1740693
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1740693
• Keywords: Lattice Boltzmann, Upscaling
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/845462
• Publisher URL: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/geofluids/2017/1740693/