Title: Effect of voxel size in flow direction on permeability and Forchheimer coefficients determined by using micro-tomography images of a porous medium

Authors: Eren Ucar; Moghtada Mobedi; Gokhan Altintas; Erik Glatt

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Izmir Institute of Technology, 35430 Urla, Izmir, Turkey; Department of Mathematics, University of Bergen, 5007 Bergen, Norway ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Izmir Institute of Technology, 35430 Urla, Izmir, Turkey ' Department of Mechanical Sciences, Engineering Faculty, Celal Bayar University, 45100 Muradiye, Turkey ' Fraunhofer-Institut für Techno-und Wirtschaftsmathematik, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

Abstract: The permeability and Forchheimer coefficients of a porous medium, volcanic rock, are determined using micro-tomography images. A cubic volume in the middle of the images is extracted as REV (representative volume). The voids in the REV are discretised into anisotropic voxels using the commercial program of GeoDict. Seven computational domains with different voxel size in flow direction are generated. The velocity and pressure fields in the voids are obtained for Reynolds numbers ranging from 0.01 to 10. The obtained fields are used to determine the permeability and the Forchheimer coefficients. The performed calculations show that the nominal pore size changes with the voxel size in flow direction, however permeability and the Forchheimer coefficient approaches to the constant values.

Keywords: porous media; tomography; permeability; voxel size; flow direction; Forchheimer coefficients; micro-tomography images; volcanic rock; pore size changes.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2015.072015

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2015 Vol.15 No.5, pp.327 - 333

Published online: 29 Sep 2015 *

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