Monte Carlo simulation of a two-phase flow in an unsaturated porous media

Abstract

Relative permeability is a significant transport property which describes the simultaneous flow of immiscible fluids in porous media. A pore-scale physical model is developed for the two-phase immiscible flow in an unsaturated porous media according to the statistically fractal scaling laws of natural porous media, and a predictive calculation of two-phase relative permeability is presented by Monte Carlo simulation. The tortuosity is introduced to characterize the highly irregular and convoluted property of capillary pathways for fluid flow through a porous medium. The computed relative permeabilities are compared with empirical formulas and experimental measurements to validate the current model. The effect of fractal dimensions and saturation on the relative permeabilities is also discussed