A LGA MODEL FOR FLUID-FLOW IN HETEROGENEOUS POROUS-MEDIA

A lattice gas automaton (LGA) model is proposed to simulate fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media. Permeability fields are created by distributing scatterers (solids, grains) within the fluid how field. These scatterers act as obstacles to flow. The loss In momentum of the fluid is directly related to the permeability of the lattice gas model. It is shown that by varying the probability of occurrence of solid nodes, the permeability of the porous medium can be changed over several orders of magnitude. To simulate fluid flow in heterogeneous permeability fields, isotropic, anisotropic, random, and correlated permeability fields are generated. The lattice gas model developed here is then used to obtain the effective permeability as well. as the local fluid flow field. The method presented here can be used to simulate fluid flow in arbitrarily complex heterogeneous porous media.