Geometrical influence of the source/drains configuration on the flow interactions in a sandbox model: A three-dimensional OpenFOAM simulation

Abstract

This paper explores the interaction of different flow paths in a porous medium by observing the effect of having more than one drain in a simple model domain with a single source. The work is based on three-dimensional numerical simulations of the flow of injected water in a sandbox domain with porous volume completely filled by water and oil. The calculation uses the OpenFOAM library to solve Darcy’s equations for the dynamics of a two-phase flow: water as the wetting, oil as the nonwetting fluid. We observe the interactions of flows in different paths under changes of number of drains and their relative positions.