[page 509, §1]
[509.1.1] Consider a onedimensional, homogeneous, isotropic and incompressible
porous column filled with two immiscible Newtonian fluids.
[509.1.2] In a one dimensional model
transversal variations and column thickness are neglected.
[509.1.3] Let
denote the saturation of wetting fluid (called
water), and
the saturation of nonwetting
fluid (called oil).
[509.1.4] Here time is
,
and
is the position in a column of length
.
[509.1.5] Each of the two fluid phases is considered to consist of a continuous,
mobile, percolating subphase, and of a discontinuous, isolated, trapped
or nonpercolating subphase as discussed in
[23, 28, 25, 24, 26].
[509.1.6] Following the notation of [26] the percolating phase of water is
[page 510, §0]
indexed by
and its nonpercolating phase is
indexed by
.
[510.0.1] The water saturation is then
.
[510.0.2] The percolating oil phase is indexed as
and its nonpercolating phase by
.
[510.0.3] The oil saturation is
.
[510.0.4] The volume fraction
of phase
is defined
as
where the volume fraction of the pore space, also called porosity,
is
.
[510.0.5] The volume fraction of the solid matrix is
denoted as
.
[510.0.6] Volume conservation requires
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(1a) | |
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(1b) |
to hold.
[510.1.1] The mass balance of fluid phase can be expressed in differential form as
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(2) |
where
are mass density, volume fraction and velocity
of phase
as functions of position
and time
.
[510.1.2]
is the mass transfer rate from all other phases into phase
.
[510.2.1] The momentum balance is written as ()
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(3) |
where is the stress tensor in the
th phase,
is
the body force per unit volume acting on the
th phase,
is the momentum transfer into phase
from
all the other phases, and
denotes
the material derivative for phase
.
[510.2.2] The stress tensor for the nonpercolating phases is defined
as the momentum
flux across surfaces in the threedimensional continuum
(see [29] for more discussion).
[510.3.1] For a macroscopically homogeneous porous medium
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(4) |
is assumed. [510.3.2] Incompressible fluids are assumed so that their densities
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(5a) | |
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(5b) | |
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(5c) | |
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(5d) |
are independent of .
[510.4.1] The percolating and the nonpercolating phases are able to exchange mass through breakup and coalescence of droplets, ganglia and clusters. [510.4.2] The mass transfer rates must depend on rates of saturation change. [510.4.3] They are here assumed to be
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(6a) | |
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(6b) |
[page 511, §0]
where are constants.
[511.0.1] The parameters
,
are defined by
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(7a) | |
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(7b) | |
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(7c) | |
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(7d) |
where are limiting saturations for
.
[511.0.2] In eq. (7) the shorthand
is used and
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(8) |
denotes the Heaviside unit step function.
[511.0.3] Equation (7) follows from the form used
in [26] for small rates of saturation change.
[511.0.4] The mass exchange depends on the sign of .
[511.0.5] The sign determines the type of process.
[511.0.6] It can switch locally between drainage and imbibition.
[511.0.7] This results in hysteresis.
[511.0.8] The structure of the mass exchange term was chosen with hindsight
such that theoretical results obtained in the residual decoupling
approximation agree with experimental measurements of capillary
pressure.
[511.0.9] The mass exchange terms have recently been further generalized to
reproduce not only capillary pressure, but also experimental capillary
desaturation curves [27].
[511.1.1] Turning to the momentum balance, note first that the inertial term will not be neglected in this paper. [511.1.2] The stress tensor for the four phases are specified as
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(9a) | |
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(9b) | |
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(9c) | |
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(9d) |
where and
are the fluid pressures in the
percolating phases.
[511.1.3] The constants
and exponents
are constitutive parameters.
[511.1.4] The assumptions for the nonpercolating phases reflect
their modified pressure.
[511.1.5] This phenomenon seems to have been
observed in experiment [2, Fig. 2, p. 233].
a (This is a footnote:) aFig. 2 in [2] shows that the pressure
measured by the pore pressure transducers PPT3 and PPT4
rebounds after the end of the infiltration, i.e. when
the DNAPL has passed and the transducers measure the
pressure of water and residual PCE
[511.1.6] In applications, the parameters
and
are determined by measuring capillary pressure curves (see below).
[511.1.7] The body forces are assumed to be given by gravity and capillarity.
[511.1.8] They are specified as
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(10a) | |
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(10b) | |
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(10c) | |
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(10d) |
with constitutive constants and exponents
.
[511.1.9] The angle
is the angle between the direction
of the column and the direction of gravity with
[page 512, §0]
corresponding to alignment.
[512.0.1] In applications the parameters
and
are determined by measuring capillary pressure curves.
[512.0.2] The capillary body forces in eqs. (10) reflect the wetting
properties of the medium.
[512.0.3] They oppose gravity and reduce
buoyancy driven flows of the disconnected phases.
[512.0.4] This is illustrated in the figures below.
[512.1.1] Finally, the momentum transfer terms are assumed to be
given by linear viscous drag characterized by constitutive
resistance coefficients through the equations
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(11a) | |
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(11b) | |
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(11c) | |
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(11d) |
where and
was used
because there is no common interface and hence no
direct viscous interaction between these phase pairs.
[512.1.2] Remember that the index
represents the rock matrix.
[512.1.3] For more details on these constitutive assumptions the reader
is referred to the original papers [24, 25, 26].
[512.2.1] The balance laws (1b), (2) and (3)
combined with the constitutive assumptions given above
provide 9 equations
for the 10 unknowns with
.
[512.2.2] To close the system of equations the conditions
or
could be used.
[512.2.3] These conditions apply when the nonpercolating phases are
immobile as it is often observed in experiment.
[512.2.4] It turns out, however, that there exists a less restrictive
and, in our opinion, more natural selfconsistent closure.
[512.3.1] The selfconsistent closure condition used in this paper
follows naturally from many limiting cases.
[512.3.2] One such limit is the residual decoupling approximation
close to hydrostatic equilibrium described in detail
in [26, Section 5., p. 216ff].
[512.3.3] A second, more general limiting case is the limit of
vanishing velocities, i.e. for
.
[512.3.4] Here we formulate the selfconsistent closure condition in
its most general form as
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(12) |
[page 513, §1]
[513.2.1] This condition follows selfconsistently from the constitutive theory.
[513.2.2] It expresses the experimental observation that
the pressure difference depends more strongly
on saturations than on velocities, and that it remains nonzero
even for vanishing velocities.
[513.2.3] Adding eqs. (3) for
and
and subtracting
eqs. (3) with
and
from the result gives
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(13) |
[513.2.4] In this form the selfconsistent closure has been used in the numerical calculation below.
[513.3.1] The mathematical model defined above was introduced and discussed in [25, 24, 26]. [513.3.2] It was recently extended to include surface tension [27]. [513.3.3] Notation and model formulation in this paper follow [26]. [513.3.4] Approximations and analytical solutions for some special cases were given in [25, 24, 26]. [513.3.5] Here the system of equations will be solved by numerical methods. [513.3.6] To this end initial and boundary conditions are needed and will be discussed next.