Fluid Flow Induced Internal Erosion within Porous Media: Modelling of the No Erosion Filter Test Experiment

Abstract

An investigation of the potential to numerically model the no erosion filter test is performed here, where the flow through a large ensemble of particles is considered by applying minimisation of dissipation rate of energy on the ensemble that is discretised with modified Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulation. Low-Reynolds number simulations are applied to each part of the Voronoi diagram using computational fluid dynamics. The mechanical friction between particles is modelled by increasing the effective viscosity for closely spaced particles. Microscopic mechanisms for successful and unsuccessful sealing of filters are obtained. The numerical results agree with previously presented experimental observations by Sherard and Dunnigan. A conformity is that the sealing starts from the end of the channel and continues outwards in the radial direction. The sealing implies that the permeability can be reduced several orders of magnitude during a test.

Modeling filtration of particulate flow during impregnation of dual-scale fabrics

“…Interestingly, a similar kind of sealing occurs when small base particles moves into larger filter particles. 44 The result is also in agreement with experimental observations in Reference [47]. Initially, permeability slightly increases because the dense particle structure in Figure 2 outside bundles dissolves.…”

“…As revealed in this work and in Reference [40], there is a qualitative agreement with experiments performed in References [21,44,47]. In order to further validate the model is interesting to separately study infiltration depth on a flat interface where the change of flow pattern is essential since it is the subject of a great amount of papers mostly related to geotechnical engineering.…”

“…The typical setup comprises a filter consisting of relatively large immovable particles, a base consisting of relatively small infiltrating particles, and a flow going normal to the flat interface in the direction towards the filter. 44,[47][48][49][50][51][52] The infiltration depth of the base particles depends on the relative size of the base and filter particles as well as their particle size distribution. A common parameter characterising such a setup is the filter retention ratio D15/d85, where D15 means particle size of filter material for which 15% by weight is finer, and d85 means particle size of base material for which 85% by weight is finer.…”

Tomographic Study of Internal Erosion of Particle Flows in Porous Media

“…A parameterized description of the deposition/erosion processes is thus needed, but these upscaling procedures always include the risk of missing important micro structural processes. The data set obtained with the experiments presented here could serve as an additional basis for further upscaling efforts, such as the one presented in [13]. From an experimental view, the investigation of larger systems is possible, but comes at the cost of losing the possibility to monitor the pore-scale deposition/erosion processes.…”

Modelling of internal erosion based on mixture theory: General framework and a case study of soil suffusion

“…However, there are still quite few numerical models for the simulation of internal erosion. Some of them employ discrete approaches and/or computation fluid dynamics . These approaches are generally very time‐consuming and still limited to laboratory scale modelling.…”