A NUMERICAL STUDY OF VISCOUS FLUID FLOW IN A SINGLE FRACTURE
The objective of this paper is to investigate the applicability and validity of the Reynolds equation (cubic law) for viscous fluid flow in rock fractures with variable apertures, by direct solution of the Nervier-Stokes equation using FEM, compared with classical smooth parallel plate model (cubic law) for constant apertures and the closed-form solution by Sisavath et al. (2003) for regularly variable apertures, using Reynolds equation. The results show that when aperture changes, rotational flow pattern occurs and the general validity of the Reynolds equation can no longer be justified, even the linear relation between mean velocity and mean gradient may still be held when the velocity magnitude is small. The findings from this research indicate when solute/particle transport processes in fractures or fracture networks need to be considered, where details of the flow pattern inside the fracture affect significantly the solute/particle interactions with flow field and fracture surface topography, the Navier-Stokes equations need to be used.
FUGUO TONG LANRU JING ROBERT W.ZIMMERMAN
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Imperial College, London, UK
国际会议
三亚
英文
165-170
2009-05-24（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）