Speaker
Description
Natural fracture networks control fluid flow in numerous engineering and environmental scenarios, thus inducing flow velocities at which fluid inertia becomes significant. Yet, traditional fracture-flow models assume laminar Newtonian flow and neglect the interplay between fluid inertia and non-Newtonian rheology. This study presents the first Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) investigation of coupled inertial and non-Newtonian effects on flow in field-based fracture networks, capturing multiscale rheology-induced turbulence within the fractures.
Simulations reveal that shear-dependent rheology controls the transition from viscous-dominated to inertia-dominated regimes and significantly alters preferential flow channelling across fracture intersections. Shear-thinning acts as an inertia amplifier, reducing the critical velocity for preferential flow compared to Newtonian and shear-thickening cases. The flow transitions from viscous-controlled to fully turbulent behaviour, with pressure fluctuations exceeding ~280 % of the mean. For the shear-thinning fluid, inertial losses overwhelmingly dominate the pressure drop. These findings establish that conventional decoupling of rheology and inertia fundamentally misrepresents hydraulic behaviour in fractured media and cannot accurately predict pressure losses and flow partitioning critical for modern subsurface operations
| Country | Australia |
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