Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, an extended finite element method is presented for simulation of interaction between hydraulic fracturing and natural fractures in saturated porous media. The well-known u−p formulation is employed in order to obtain the fully coupled set of governing equations. Natural faults are modeled for both opening and closure modes where the fluid inflow and contact conditions are considered at the interface, respectively. The Darcy law is employed in conjunction with an aperture dependent permeability for the fracture channel to describe the interfacial inflow. The contact constraints of both the solid and fluid phases are imposed using the Penalty method. The Heaviside and modified... 

Successful designs for an injection process to improve reservoir recovery seek more accurate values of saturation dependent functions, including relative permeability curves. The ignorance on underlying heterogeneity (e.g. layering) might lead to inaccurate predicting of flow behavior in layered heterogeneous porous media. Analysis of experimental core flood results in composite core systems (the system) along with numerical simulation at the core scale can provide an insight into this problem, especially when the capillary effects are present. In this study unsteady state two phase displacements have been conducted on the system with different internal arrangements. The main contribution is... 

In this work, the electrokinetic properties of asphaltene particles have been investigated. Micro-electrophoresis method by applying DC electric field, was utilized to different mixtures containing asphaltene to determine its electric charge. It was observed that in the case of using n-heptane and its mixture with toluene (heptol), the asphaltene particles were showed to be positively charged however for toluene itself, they expressed no tendency toward the electrodes. While it is expected that larger asphaltene aggregates carry higher electric charge, the results contradictorily showed that they are mainly governed by gravity rather than electro-static force and that “aggregation” reduces... 

Inertial microfluidics is utilized as a powerful passive method for particle and cell manipulation, which uses the hydrodynamic forces of the fluid in the channel to focus particles in specific equilibrium positions in the cross section of the channel. To achieve high performance manipulation, knowledge of focusing pattern of particles in the cross section of channel is essential. In this paper, we propose a method to address this important issue. To this end, firstly inertial microfluidics is analyzed in rectangular cross section channels. The results indicate that fluid flow velocity and channel's cross-sectional profiles have great impacts on the forces exerted on particles. Next, these... 

An exact analytical solution for one-dimensional fluid flow through rock matrix block is presented. The nonlinearity induced from flow functions makes the governing equations describing this mechanism difficult to be analytically solved. In this paper, an analytical solution to the infiltration problems considering non-linear relative permeability functions is presented for finite depth, despite its profound and fundamental importance. Elimination of the nonlinear terms in the equation, as a complex and tedious task, is done by applying several successive mathematical manipulations including: Hopf-Cole transformation to obtain a diffusive type PDE; an exponential type transformation to get a... 

Recently, Colloidal Gas Aphron (CGA) based fluids have been introduced to further develop depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs. This fluid system has been employed in an attempt to control drilling fluid invasion and, thus, reducing formation damage occurred during drilling operations. Understanding the mechanisms of fluid invasion control is of great importance for successful design and application of CGA-based fluids in drilling operations. Although fluid flow of conventional foams has been studied extensively in the available literature, little attention has been paid to CGA fluids flow, especially in heterogeneous fractured porous media. Here, an experimental study was conducted to achieve... 

In this article, effects of magnetic fields induced by a finite length solenoid on the forced-convection heat transfer in a pipe partially filled with porous medium have been investigated. In this regard, two-dimensional steady-state fluid flow in the pipe was considered and the Darcy–Brinkman equation of motion was applied to model the fluid flow in the porous medium, as well as the thermal equilibrium was assumed between the solid phase and the magnetic nanofluid. Effects of electric current passing through the solenoid and the solenoid dimensions (i.e.; diameter and length) on the forced-convection heat transfer were studied carefully. The combined effects of the magnetic field and the... 

Natural nanochannels and those used for applied purposes are often several nanometers in diameter and have lengths up to micrometer scales. Since normally no pressure gradient, mechanical force or electrical field is exerted on fluids in these situations, the fluid flow within them is not single-file and can be bidirectional. For this reason, studying the behavior of bidirectional flows in the channels is of paramount importance. In this study, a comprehensive investigation on the straight and non-straight bidirectional water transfer through carbon nanotubes is conducted via extensive molecular dynamics simulations. The results indicate that by changing the length, the diameter and the... 

In the last decade, extensive attention is devoted to intelligibly designed materials of macro/micro-structures containing the fluid flow. In this study, intelligent control and vibrational stability of cantilevered fluid conveying macro/micro-tubes utilizing axially functionally graded (AFG) materials are considered. The governing equation of motion of the system is derived based on modified couple stress theory and then is discretized using Galerkin method. A detailed investigation is carried out to elaborate the influence of various parameters such as material properties, axial compressive load, and Pasternak foundation on the dynamical behavior of the system, all of which are influential... 

Acidizing is one of the most effective techniques to remove the formation damage and restore (or even increase) the permeability of the near wellbore region. Although this technique is widely used to resolve the skin problem, it could initiate new damages itself that hinder the fluid flow and decrease the well production, consequently. Acid-oil emulsion and sludge formation are known as two major induced formation damage and the main reasons for the oil well acid treatment failures. Despite its critical effects, no comprehensive study has been addressed this specific type of formation damages in details. In this study, the acid-oil emulsion and asphaltic sludge formation were evaluated... 

Capillary imbibition is an important recovery mechanism in naturally fractured reservoirs when water-filled fractures surround water-wet matrix blocks. A large amount of studies of imbibition process is simply total or partial immersion of nonwetting phase saturated rock in aqueous wetting phase. However, water advance in fractures during water flooding or water encroachment from an active aquifer introduces time dependent boundary conditions where invariant exposure of rock surface to water is not representative. In this work, a laboratory simulated matrix-fracture system was used to investigate different aspects of imbibition in the presence of fracture fluid flow (namely dynamic... 

Static and dynamic properties of porous media are highly dependent on its internal geometry. CT scan images are generally used to characterize porous media geometry. Direct simulation of fluid flow on CT scan images is possible but considerably time-consuming. In this study, a new method was developed for extracting a simplified representation known as “pore network model” by utilizing a rigorous algebraic-analytical method. By using a moving frame in the 3D matrix of the CT scan image and stepwise identifying-removing of image components, running time for a 4003 voxels sample in a typical computer system decreased to less than 350 s. The identification of throats was based on a new... 

In this study, the effect of the geometrical parameters of the Lateral Flow Immunoassay (LFI) membrane on the performance of the pregnancy kits is investigated. Consequently, a new geometry for LFI membrane is proposed based on some theoretical, numerical and experimental observations in order to improve the performance of the related kits. A pregnancy kit (for the detection of hCG in urine samples) is developed and the effect of the relocation of the test and the control lines over the membrane was studied based on the variation of the sample fluid velocity. Using Lattice-Boltzmann simulation of the lateral flow within the porous media and the experimental results, the fluid flow within the... 

Drilling fluid is a complex fluid, including base fluid and other materials, carrying out the vital functions during drilling operation such as cutting transport and controlling formation pressure. In order to optimize performance of a drilling process, a reliable rheological model is required in the computation of fluid flow dynamics. Time-independent Generalized Newtonian formulation are the most common models for describing the rheological behavior of drilling fluids due to its simplicity and ease of use, in spite the fact that they are not able to predict the normal stresses and could not consider effects of active components on the rheological behavior of the drilling fluid and also... 

Increasing efficiency, improving energy consumption, and optimizing energy in industries are more than ever considered by researchers. Some methods such as nanoparticles use and porous medium are used to increase the heat transfer rate. For this reason, in this paper, simulation and optimization of a two-dimensional tube with the presence of water–silver nanofluid and porous media have been performed to improve heat transfer. Different profiles of the rate, pressure, and temperature of the two-dimensional tube at volume fraction, porosity coefficient and Darcy numbers have been obtained and finally, the results are compared. Then, the Nusselt number and the friction coefficient in the range... 

In the last decade, extensive attention is devoted to intelligibly designed materials of macro/micro-structures containing the fluid flow. In this study, intelligent control and vibrational stability of cantilevered fluid conveying macro/micro-tubes utilizing axially functionally graded (AFG) materials are considered. The governing equation of motion of the system is derived based on modified couple stress theory and then is discretized using Galerkin method. A detailed investigation is carried out to elaborate the influence of various parameters such as material properties, axial compressive load, and Pasternak foundation on the dynamical behavior of the system, all of which are influential... 

Production or injection of fluids from/in an underground storage site causes variations of pore pressure and stress states. These fluctuations significantly affect implications for hydraulic fracturing, wellbore integrity, top surface subsidence and heave, fault-reactivation, and stability of reservoir and caprock. Therefore, in order to keep optimal conditions during the process of gas injection and production, it is of paramount importance to have accurate estimates of the pore pressure. In this investigation, coupled fluid flow and geomechanical simulations, as well as rock mechanical tests, are performed on the Sarajeh field, Iran to investigate the geomechanical behavior of the Sarajeh... 

Capacitance-Resistive Model (CRM), as a fast yet efficient proxy model, suffers from some limitations in modeling relatively complex reservoirs. Some current improvements on this proxy made it a more powerful simulator with updating parameters over time. However, the model's intrinsic uncertainty arisen from simplifying fluid-flow modeling by some limited number of constant parameters is not addressed yet. In this study, this structural limitation of CRM has been addressed by introducing a time-correlated model error, including stochastic and non-stochastic parameters, embedded into this proxy's formulation. The error term's non-stochastic parameters have been tuned to be used in forecasting... 

During the low salinity waterflooding (LSWF) of a viscous asphaltic oil reservoir, fluid-fluid interactions have a large influence on the fluid flow, pore-scale events, and thus oil recovery efficiency and behavior. In-situ water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion formation is a consequence of crude oil and brine interfacial activities. Despite the published studies, the pore-scale mechanisms of W/O emulsion formation and the role of injected brine salinity, injection rate, and pore-scale heterogeneity on emulsion formation and stability requires a deeper understanding. To address these, a series of static and dynamic micro-scale experiments were performed. The salinity dependent oil-brine interactions... 

In this study, in order to investigate the effect of the underlying pore-scale processes on continuum scale simulations of porous media dissolution, we improve the standard Lattice Boltzmann method using Quadtree grid refinement approach to simulate fluid flow and reactive transport through large domain sizes. Our results have shown considerable computational improvements up to 80% in simulation time together with increased numerical accuracy. The results and the added value of the new approach are discussed using comparison of our model with the conventional LBM. Moreover, we have applied a systematic analysis by increasing complexity levels and starting from fluid flow and continuing with...