Title: Comparison of permeability of model porous media between SPH and LB

Authors: Gerald G. Pereira; Pablo M. Dupuy; Paul W. Cleary; Gary W. Delaney

Addresses: CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, Private Bag 33, Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia ' CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, Private Bag 33, Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia ' CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, Private Bag 33, Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia ' CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, Private Bag 33, Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia

Abstract: Understanding how the permeability of a porous medium changes as function of solid fraction and pore geometry is vital in many significant areas. Here, we construct a number of different porous media via computer methods. We then simulate the flow of a viscous liquid through the solid packing using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and Lattice Boltzmann (LB) methods. Qualitative comparisons of flow between the two methods are generally good as are the quantitative permeability comparisons. The relative computational efficiency of both methods is examined with the LB method being superior to SPH for this application.

Keywords: DEM; discrete element method; SPH; smoothed particle hydrodynamics; lattice Boltzmann method; porous media; permeability; solid fraction; pore geometry; simulation; viscous liquid; fluid flow.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2012.047460

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2012 Vol.12 No.2/3, pp.176 - 186

Published online: 25 Nov 2014 *

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