Multiscale modelling of hydraulic conductivity in vuggy porous media

Abstract

Flow in both saturated and non-saturated vuggy porous media, i.e. soil, is inherently multiscale. The complex microporous structure of the soil aggregates and the wider vugs provides a multitude of flow pathways and has received significant attention from the X-ray computed tomography (CT) community with a constant drive to image at higher resolution. Using multiscale homogenization, we derive averaged equations to study the effects of the microscale structure on the macroscopic flow. The averaged model captures the underlying geometry through a series of cell problems and is verified through direct comparison to numerical simulations of the full structure. These methods offer significant reductions in computation time and allow us to perform three-dimensional calculations with complex geometries on a desktop PC. The results show that the surface roughness of the aggregate has a significantly greater effect on the flow than the microstructure within the aggregate. Hence, this is the region in which the resolution of X-ray CT for image-based modelling has the greatest impact.