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Numerical simulations of incompressible fluid flow in synthetic fractures using lattice Boltzmann method

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Abstract

The effect of the geometrical complexity on the fluid flow through single fractures is the subject of this study. Synthetic self-affine fractures with different waviness and local roughness are generated by SynFrac. Several fracture profiles were sliced from the generated fractures for 2D simulations. An incompressible lattice Boltzmann method with non-equilibrium extrapolation method was used to simulate the fluid flow through the generated rough fractures by solving the full Navier-Stokes equations. The results indicate that the scaling irregular nature has a great influence on the fluid flow through single fractures. The tortuosity and the randomly distributed stagnated areas had been confirmed as the reasons for the deviation from local cubic law both theoretically and numerically. The tortuosity tends to have a linear relationship with the standard deviations which represent the amplitude of the waviness on the large scale, and a second-order dependence on the fractal dimensions which presents the degree of local roughness. The recirculation zones were formed in the troughs of rough fractures even when the flow was a creeping one with the Reynolds number below 1. These stagnated areas were observed to have an intuitive influence on the local effective advective aperture. An effective volume ratio was defined to quantify this effect of eddies on the hydraulic aperture which had been related to the local roughness of the fractures. The tortuosity of the fluid flow and eddies formed along the fractures combined together to make the permeability deviate from the local cubic law.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Research Project Foundation of China Three Gorges Corporation (Grant No. BHT/0811), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC1501301), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41772305 and 51579189). These supports are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. China Three Gorges Projects Development Co., Ltd, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Guan Rong & Yaosheng Tan

  2. Key Laboratory of Rock Mechanics in Hydraulic Structural Engineering, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Guan Rong, Long Cheng, Junsong Quan, Renhui He & Jie Tan

  3. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Guan Rong, Long Cheng, Junsong Quan, Renhui He & Jie Tan

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  1. Guan Rong
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  2. Long Cheng
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  3. Junsong Quan
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  4. Yaosheng Tan
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  5. Renhui He
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  6. Jie Tan
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Correspondence to Guan Rong.

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Responsible Editor: Amjad Kallel

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Rong, G., Cheng, L., Quan, J. et al. Numerical simulations of incompressible fluid flow in synthetic fractures using lattice Boltzmann method. Arab J Geosci 13, 1211 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-06159-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-06159-z

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