Study of the Imbibition Phenomenon in Porous Media by the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) Method

Abstract

Over recent decades, studies in porous media have focused on many fields, typically in the development of oil and gas reservoirs. The imbibition phenomenon, a common mechanism affecting multi-phase flows in porous media, has shown more significant impacts on unconventional reservoir development, where the effect of the pore space increases with decreased pore sizes. In this paper, a comprehensive SPH method is applied, considering the binary interactions among the particles to study the imbibition phenomenon in porous media. The model is validated with physically meaningful results showing the effects of surface tension, contact angle, and pore structures. A heterogeneous porous medium is also constructed to study the effect of heterogeneity on the imbibition phenomenon; it can be referred from the results that the smaller pore throats and wetting surfaces are more preferred for the imbibition. The results show that the SPH method can be applied to solve the imbibition problems, but the unstable problem is still a sore point for the SPH method.