Flows within porous media play important roles in many scientific and industrial systems. However, the case wherein such flows become turbulent has not been completely understood, particularly, from a mathematical viewpoint. In this study, the $k-\varepsilon$ model (the variable $k$ denotes the turbulent kinetic energy per unit mass and $\varepsilon$ the dissipation rate for the turbulent kinetic energy), which has been widely used for the usual turbulent flow in a clear fluid, was applied to a turbulent flow through porous media. If a homogeneous, averaged flow and homogeneous isotropic turbulence are assumed, the governing equations for the variables $k$ and $\varepsilon$ describe a straight line as a nullcline common to both the variables. The nullcline was shown to be a line attractor. A temporal evolution of the eddy viscosity was also obtained, and the initial and final values of the eddy viscosity were observed to be related to a power law, indicating universal sensitivity. This sensitivity originates from the common nullcline and is not observed for the usual turbulent flow. Finally, nonlinear mathematical and seismological implications were provided using based on the results obtained.
The interaction between the flow above and below a permeable wall is a central topic in the study of porous media. While previous investigations have provided compelling evidence of the strong coupling between the two regions, few studies have quantitatively measured the directionality, i.e., causal-and-effect relations, of this interaction. To shed light on the problem, we use transfer entropy as a marker to evaluate the causal interaction between the free turbulent flow and the porous media using interface-resolved direct numerical simulation. Our results show that the porosity of the porous…
Recent numerical simulations indicate that streamwise-preferential anisotropic porous materials have the potential to reduce skin friction in turbulent flows through a similar mechanism to riblets. This paper reports particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements made in turbulent boundary layers at $Re_τ\approx 360$ over 3D-printed porous substrates exhibiting such streamwise-preferential permeability. The porous material has normalized streamwise permeability $\sqrt{K_{xx}^+}\approx 3.0$ and wall-normal and spanwise permeabilities $\sqrt{K_{yy}^+} = \sqrt{K_{zz}^+} \approx 1.1$. This material…
New insight into the contribution of the microscale vortex evolution towards convection heat transfer in porous media is presented in this paper. The objective is to determine how the microscale vortices influence convection heat transfer in turbulent flow inside porous media. The microscale temperature distribution is analyzed using flow visualization in 2D using streamlines and in 3D using Q structures. The pertinent observations are supplemented with the comparison of surface skin friction and heat transfer using: (1) surface skin friction lines and (2) joint PDF of pressure and skin fricti…
The effect of the variations of the permeability tensor on the close-to-the-wall behaviour of a turbulent channel flow bounded by porous walls is explored using a set of direct numerical simulations. It is found that the total drag can be either reduced or increased by more than $20\%$ by adjusting the permeability directional properties. Drag reduction is achieved for the case of materials with permeability in the vertical direction lower than the one in the wall-parallel planes. This configuration limits the wall normal velocity at the interface while promoting an increase of the tangential …
Microscale turbulence in porous media is a new physical phenomenon that exhibits unique properties unlike those in classical turbulence flows. At low values of porosity, the surface forces on the solid obstacles compete with the inertial force of the fluid flow to result in the formation of flow instabilities. In this paper, we report the origin and mechanism of a symmetry-breaking phenomenon in periodic porous media that causes a deviation in the direction of the mean flow from that of the applied pressure gradient. Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is used to simulate turbulent flow in a homogeneo…
In this short note we consider a nonlinear and spatially nonlocal PDE modelling moisture evolution in a porous medium. We then show that it naturally arises as a description of superdiffusive jump phenomenon occurring in the medium. We provide a deterministic derivation which allows us to naturally incorporate the nonlinear effects. This reasoning shows that in our setting the so-called nonlocal pressure form of the porous medium equation is preferred as a description of the evolution. In that case the governing nonlocal operator is the fractional gradient rather than the fractional Laplacian.
We investigate the effect of small suction Reynolds number and permeability parameter on the stability of Poiseuille fluid flow in a porous medium between two parallel horizontal stationary porous plates . We have shown that the perturbed flow is governed by an equation named modified Orr-Sommerfeld equation. We find also that the normalization of the wall-normal velocity with characteristic small suction (or small injection) velocity is important for a perfect command of porous medium fluid flow stability analysis. The stabilizing effect of the parameters in general and small suction Reynolds…
We study the axisymmetric propagation of a viscous gravity current over a deep porous medium into which it also drains. A model for the propagation and drainage of the current is developed and solved numerically in the case of constant input from a point source. In this case, a steady state is possible in which drainage balances the input, and we present analytical expressions for the resulting steady profile and radial extent. We demonstrate good agreement between our experiments, which use a bed of vertically aligned tubes as the porous medium, and the theoretically predicted evolution and s…
The focus of this paper is to systematically study the influence of solid obstacle surface roughness in porous media on the microscale flow physics and report its effect on macroscale drag and Nusselt number. The Reynolds averaged flow field is numerically simulated for a flow through a periodic porous medium consisting of an in-line arrangement of square cylinders with square roughness particles on the cylinder surface. Two flow regimes are identified with respect to the surface roughness particle height: fine and coarse roughness regimes. The effect of the roughness particles in the fine rou…
In the above paper the author treats the boundary layer flow along a vertical flat plate, immersed in a Darcy Brinkman Forchheimer porous medium. The porosity and the permeability of the porous medium are variable across the boundary layer. In addition a magnetic field with constant strength is applied normal to the plate. The fluid temperature at the plate is constant and different from that of the ambient fluid. This temperature difference creates a buoyancy force and the flow is characterized as mixed convection. The partial differential equations of the boundary layer flow are transformed …
In the above paper the author treats the boundary layer flow of an electrically conducting, non-Newtonian fluid along a vertical plate embedded in a Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer porous medium. The fluid is under the action of a constant transverse magnetic field and the radiation is taken into account in the energy equation. The boundary layer equations are transformed into ordinary ones and subsequently are solved numerically. However, there is a fundamental error in this paper which is presented below:
The capillary flow of a ferrofluid in a single cylindrical capillary tube and through a sandy porous medium under the action of a non-uniform magnetic field is studied experimentally. The dynamics of the capillary rise and the static case have been considered. It has been shown that the non-uniform magnetic field with upward directed gradient accelerates the capillary rise; contrary, the non-uniform magnetic field with downward directed gradient decelerates the capillary rise. Time dependences of the ferrofluid height and maximum reachable height of ferrofluid have been analyzed. The method of…
The paper presents a theoretical study using the Karman-Pohlhausen method for describing the transient heat exchange between the boundary-layer free convection and a vertical flat plate embedded in a porous medium. The unsteady behavior is developed after the generation of an impulsive heat flux step at the right-hand side of the plate. Two cases are considered according to whether the plate has a finite thickness or no thickness. The time and space evolution of the interface temperature is evidenced.
A sensitive porosity adjoint method (SPAM) for optimizing the topology of fluid machines has been proposed. A sensitivity function with respect to the porosity has been developed. In the first step of the optimization process, porous media are introduced into the flow regime according to the sensitivity function. Then the optimized porous media are transformed to solid walls. The turbulent flow in porous media is accounted for by a modified eddy-viscosity based turbulence model. Its influence on the adjoint equations is nevertheless neglected, which refers to the so called frozen turbulence as…
This paper discusses the issue of non-uniqueness of the permeability of a porous medium with a random structure. The permeability range for 12,000 realizations of a random porous structure is examined using a recently-developed modelling approach, which results in up to two orders of magnitude permeability variations in low porosities. These findings are compared with previous results for 13,000 realizations with a scaled-down size, and it is shown that the permeability histogram does not converge towards a narrower spectrum using larger domain sizes. The similarity between advective transport…
In this letter, we show that pore-scale diffusiophoresis of colloidal particles along local salt gradients manifests in the macroscopic dispersion of particles in a porous medium. Despite is transient character, this microscopic phenomenon controls large-scale particle transport by altering their partitioning between transmitting and dead-end pores. It determines the distribution of residence and arrival times in the medium. Depending on the diffusiophoretic mobility, particles can be mobilized from or trapped in dead-end pores, which provides a means for the controlled manipulation of particl…
The filtration of fluid in 2D porous medium is simulated by the molecular dynamics technique. The high concentration of fluid is created at the initial point in time and the number of fluid particles is investigated in all porous. The concentration of particles pores and parameters of interaction potentials is varied. In all cases the particles concentration decay is well described by exponential functions. The decreasing of the interpore channels leads to the increasing of the relaxation time and does not depend on the system size. This phenomenon is observed in real filtration processes.
We present modeling of an incompressible viscous flow through a fracture adjacent to a porous medium. We consider a fast stationary flow, predominantly tangential to the porous medium. Slow flow in such setting can be described by the Beavers-Joseph-Saffman slip. For fast flows, a nonlinear filtration law in the porous medium and a non- linear interface law are expected. In this paper we rigorously derive a quadratic effective slip interface law which holds for a range of Reynolds numbers and fracture widths. The porous medium flow is described by the Darcys law. The result shows that the inte…
We report forced radial imbibition of water in a porous medium in a Hele-Shaw cell. Washburn's law is confirmed in our experiment. Radial imbibition follows scaling dynamics and shows anomalous roughening dynamics when the front invades the porous medium. The roughening dynamics depend on the flow rate of the injected fluid. The growth exponents increase linearly with an increase in the flow rate while the roughness exponents decrease with an increase in the flow rate. Roughening dynamics of radial imbibition is markedly different from one dimensional imbibition with a planar interface window.…
A bidisperse porous medium is one with two porosity scales. There are the usual pores known as macro pores but also cracks or fissures in the skeleton which give rise to micro pores. In this article we develop and analyse a model for thermal convection where a layer of viscous incompressible fluid overlies a layer of bidisperse porous medium. Care has to be taken with the boundary conditions at the interface of the fluid and the porous material and this aspect is investigated. The situation is one in a layer which is heated from below and under appropriate conditions bimodal neutral curves are…
Interfacial boundary conditions determined from empirical or ad-hoc models remain the standard approach to model fluid flows over porous media, even in situations where the topology of the porous medium is known. We propose a non-empirical and accurate method to compute the effective boundary conditions at the interface between a porous surface and an overlying flow. Using multiscale expansion (homogenization) approach, we derive a tensorial generalized version of the empirical condition suggested by Beavers & Joseph (1967). The components of the tensors determining the effective slip velocity…
The equations of motion in a macroscopically inhomogeneous porous medium saturated by a fluid are derived. As a first verification of the validity of these equations, a two-layer rigid frame porous system considered as one single porous layer with a sudden change in physical properties is studied. A simple wave equation is derived and solved for this system. The reflection and transmission coefficients are calculated numerically using a wave splitting-Green's function approach (WS-GF). The reflected and transmitted wave time histories are also simulated. Experimental results obtained for mater…
Channel formation and branching is widely seen in physical systems where movement of fluid through a porous structure causes the spatiotemporal evolution of the medium in response to the flow, in turn causing flow pathways to evolve. We provide a simple theoretical framework that embodies this feedback mechanism in a multi-phase model for flow through a fragile porous medium with a dynamic permeability. Numerical simulations of the model show the emergence of branched networks whose topology is determined by the geometry of external flow forcing. This allows us to delineate the conditions unde…
The study investigates the problem of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) free convection over a non-isothermal axisymmetric body under the action of transverse magnetic field. The body is embedded in a porous medium saturated with electrically conducting non-Newtonian power law fluid. In order to obtain similarity solution, it is assumed that the viscosity of the fluid decays exponentially with temperature. The qualitative results are illustrated for a vertical flat plate, horizontal cylinder and sphere.
We propose a theory for erosional channelization induced by fluid flow in a saturated granular porous medium. When the local fluid flow-induced stress is larger than a critical threshold, grains are dislodged and carried away so that the porosity of the medium is altered by erosion. This in turn affects the local hydraulic conductivity and pressure in the medium and results in the growth and development of channels that preferentially conduct the flow. Our multiphase model involves a dynamical porosity field that evolves along with the volume fraction of the mobile and immobile grains in respo…
We present modeling of the incompressible viscous flows in the domain containing an unconfined fluid and a porous medium. For such setting a rigorous derivation of the Beavers-Joseph-Saffman interface condition was undertaken by Jäger and Mikelić [SIAM J. Appl. Math. \rm 60 (2000), p. 1111-1127] using the homogenization method. So far the interface law for the pressure was conceived and confirmed only numerically. In this article we justify rigorously the pressure jump condition using the corresponding boundary layer.
We show that when a non-wetting fluid drains a stratified porous medium at sufficiently small capillary numbers Ca, it flows only through the coarsest stratum of the medium; by contrast, above a threshold Ca, the non-wetting fluid is also forced laterally, into part of the adjacent, finer strata. The spatial extent of this partial invasion increases with Ca. We quantitatively understand this behavior by balancing the stratum-scale viscous pressure driving the flow with the capillary pressure required to invade individual pores. Because geological formations are frequently stratified, we antici…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the spatial fluctuations in fluid flow through a three-dimensional porous medium. We find that the velocity magnitudes and the velocity components both along and transverse to the imposed flow direction are exponentially distributed, even with residual trapping of a second immiscible fluid. Moreover, we find pore-scale correlations in the flow that are determined by the geometry of the medium. Our results suggest that, despite the considerable complexity of the pore space, fluid flow through it is not completely random.
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the formation and complex morphologies of trapped non-wetting fluid ganglia within a model 3D porous medium. The wetting fluid continues to flow around the ganglia after they form; this flow is characterized by a capillary number, Ca. We find that the ganglia configurations do not vary for small Ca; by contrast, as Ca is increased above a threshold value, the largest ganglia start to become mobilized and are ultimately removed from the medium. By combining our 3D visualization with measurements of the bulk transport, we show that this behavior c…
We report an approach to fully visualize the flow of two immiscible fluids through a model three-dimensional (3D) porous medium at pore-scale resolution. Using confocal microscopy, we directly image the drainage of the medium by the non-wetting oil and subsequent imbibition by the wetting fluid. During imbibition, the wetting fluid pinches off threads of oil in the narrow crevices of the medium, forming disconnected oil ganglia. Some of these ganglia remain trapped within the medium. By resolving the full 3D structure of the trapped ganglia, we show that the typical ganglion size, and the tota…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the simultaneous flow of both a wetting and a non-wetting fluid through a model three-dimensional (3D) porous medium. We find that, for small flow rates, both fluids flow through unchanging, distinct, connected 3D pathways; in stark contrast, at sufficiently large flow rates, the non-wetting fluid is broken up into discrete ganglia. By performing experiments over a range of flow rates, using fluids of different viscosities, and with porous media having different geometries, we show that this transition can be characterized by a state diagram tha…
