Quantitative analysis of numerical estimates for the permeability of porous media from lattice-Boltzmann simulations

During the last decade, lattice-Boltzmann simulations have been improved to become an efficient tool for determining the permeability of porous media samples. However, well-known improvements of the original algorithm are often not implemented. These include, for example, multirelaxation time schemes or improved boundary conditions, as well as different possibilities to impose a pressure gradient. This paper shows that a significant difference of the calculated permeabilities can be found unless one uses a carefully selected set-up. We present a detailed discussion of possible simulation set-ups and quantitative studies of the influence of simulation parameters. We illustrate our results by applying the algorithm to a Fontainebleau sandstone and by comparing our benchmark studies to other numerical permeability measurements in the literature.