Multi-Phase Flow at the Pore-Scale: Making Lattice Boltzmann Simulations fit Experimental Data

In recent years significant progress has been made in the development of numerical models to describe flow and transport at the pore-scale. A promising modeling technique is the lattice Boltzmann method. However, the problem of how to identify appropriate lattice Boltzmann parameters and how to scale the simulations to comply with physical data is often not addressed. By looking at simple multi-phase flow systems we discuss the parametization and scaling issues. We make the link to real physical data by comparing simulations with observations of pore-scale two-phase flow. The experimental data consist of three-dimensional pore-scale images of oil-water drainage and imbibition experiments in a glass bead porous medium. The images were obtained at a resolution of 17 microns per voxel using the GSECARS microtomography beamline at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. From the images we compute fluid saturations and fluid-fluid interfacial areas enabling both a qualitative and quantitative comparison with lattice Boltzmann simulation results.