Effect of voxel size in flow direction on permeability and Forchheimer coefficients determined by using micro-tomography images of a porous medium

Abstract

The permeability and Forchheimer coefficients of a porous medium, volcanic rock, are determined using micro-tomography images. A cubic volume in the middle of the images is extracted as REV (representative volume). The voids in the REV are discretised into anisotropic voxels using the commercial program of GeoDict. Seven computational domains with different voxel size in flow direction are generated. The velocity and pressure fields in the voids are obtained for Reynolds numbers ranging from 0.01 to 10. The obtained fields are used to determine the permeability and the Forchheimer coefficients. The performed calculations show that the nominal pore size changes with the voxel size in flow direction, however permeability and the Forchheimer coefficient approaches to the constant values.