3D Microstructure Meeting in Saarbrücken / Germany (Nov 02-04, 2011)

Two-phase flow through a porous media can be described by two effective properties: the capillary pressure saturation relationship and the relative permeability. In porous media simulations on macroscopic scales, these properties are input parameters. They can be determined experimentally by measurements performed on rock samples or sand columns, and they can be determined numerically by simulations on pore scale 3D tomograms of the porous media. Numerical methods usually require large amounts of memory as tomograms consist of often more than 1000³ grid points. Furthermore, the solution of two-phase flow problems is very timeconsuming. We overcome both obstacles by combining the pore morphology method with singlephase flow simulations. The pore morphology method [1] uses the Young-Laplace equation and geometric analysis of the pore space to determine the phase distribution at a given capillary pressure. For a given capillary pressure, this phase distribution is assumed to be immobile. The relative permeability is then determined by solving Stokes' equation in the space occupied by one phase only. Using a numerically efficient solver [2], which works directly on the segmented tomogram, the computational costs of this new approach are comparatively low and results can be achieved on a desktop computer. The whole workflow: import of the tomogram; segmentation; pore morphology method; flow simulations; is integrated in the GeoDict software package [4]. This allows for an automated and rapid analysis of a given tomogram