Non-Darcy flow in disordered porous media: A lattice Boltzmann study

It is well known that the Darcy law is insufficient for describing high-rate flows in porous media. However, it is still an open problem to establish a universal form for the nonlinear correction to Darcy law. In this work, we will investigate numerically the non-Darcy effect on incompressible flows through disordered porous media. Numerical simulations at pore-scale level are carried out with the Reynolds number varying from 0.02 to 30, which covers the Darcy and non-Darcy flow regimes. Three regimes are identified for flow through porous media, i.e., a linear Darcy regime at vanishing Reynolds number, a cubic transitional or weak inertial regime at low but finite Reynolds number, and a quadratic Forchheimer or strong inertial regime at larger Reynolds numbers. Finally, a general correlation is proposed to include the non-Darcy effect, as an extension to the common empirical expressions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.