Modeling bubble flow in fracture with lattice Boltzmann model

Abstract

International audienceIn the framework of radioactive waste disposal studies, behaviorof hydrogen produced through anaerobic corrosion of the steel canisters is akey point. At the near and far field scale, the migration process of hydrogenis modeled using macroscopic two-phase flow models requiring macroscopicdata like relative permeability curves. As relative permeability curves for verylow permeable media are difficult to measure experimentally, two-phase flowmodelling at the pore scale appears as an interesting tool. The objective of thispaper is to present a Lattice Boltzmann approach used to model two-phaseflow in fractures with apertures of a few micrometers in aperture and someelementary simulations of bubble flow allowing to understand the behavior oftwo-phase flow in very low gas saturation contex