Many-body dissipative particle dynamics modeling of fluid flow in fine- grained nanoporous shales

YD Xia and J Goral and H Huang and I Miskovic and P Meakin and M Deo, PHYSICS OF FLUIDS, 29, 056601 (2017).

DOI: 10.1063/1.4981136

A many-body dissipative particle dynamics model, namely, MDPD, is applied for simulation of pore-scale, multi-component, multi-phase fluid flows in fine-grained, nanoporous shales. Since this model is able to simultaneously capture the discrete features of fluid molecules in nanometer size pores and continuum fluid dynamics in larger pores, and is relatively easy to parameterize, it has been recognized as being particularly suitable for simulating complex fluid flow in multi-length- scale nanopore networks of shales. A remarkable feature of this work is the integration of a high-resolution FIB-SEM (focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy) digital imaging technique to the MDPD model for providing 3D voxel data that contain the invaluable geometrical and compositional information of shale samples. This is the first time that FIB-SEM is seamlessly linked to a Lagrangian model like MDPD for fluid flow simulation, which offers a robust approach to bridging gaps between the molecular-and continuum-scales, since the relevant spatial and temporal scales are too big for molecular dynamics, and too small for computational fluid dynamics with known constitutive models. Simulations ranging from a number of benchmark problems to a forced two-fluid flow in a Woodford shale sample are presented. Results indicate that this model can be used to deliver reasonable simulations for multi-component, multi-phase fluid flows in arbitrarily complex pore networks in shales. Published by AIP Publishing.

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