Multi-scale Interface Tracking in Two-phase Fluid Flow in the Porous Media
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The modeling of interface advancement in a porous medium with two-phase flows becomes a challenge in multi-scale approaches, in many engineering problems such as the prediction of void formation in resin transfer modeling (RTM) processes. In the literature, Blanco et al. in [1] proposed a work on the modeling of steady single-phase incompressible flow in a porous medium. As opposed to conventional approaches which rely on Darcy’s law, they have used the Navier-Stokes model to describe this phenomenon. This was done through a multi-scale approach based on the principle of multi-scale virtual power. Shakoor and Park in [2] completed their work by taking into account the inertial effect. They used the Finite Element (FE) method to implement the proposed model in parallel with a strong coupling between coarse and fine scales. In the case of two-phase flows, single-scale approaches such as Volume of Fluid or Level-Set methods have been extensively developed in the literature but not multi-scale interface tracking methods. In this work, we propose to model two-phase flows in a porous medium, with surface tension at the interface, and track the interface from the fine scale to the coarse scale. The resin/air front progression model, at the pore scale, is the transport equation of the interface. From this equation, and through the development of a multi-scale virtual power method principle, we establish the model of interface progression at the macro scale. The numerical implementation method is the F E method, in the form of parallel F E × F E between the two scales. This approach helps to predict the multi-scale flow front advancement and the behavior of the interface in two-phase fluid flows.