From creeping to inertial flow in porous media: a lattice Boltzmann - Finite Element study

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the lattice Boltzmann method's ability to simulate flow in porous media across a range of Reynolds numbers, demonstrating its accuracy and applicability beyond the creeping flow regime.

Contribution

It demonstrates the capability of the lattice Boltzmann method to accurately model inertial effects in porous media at moderate Reynolds numbers, aligning with finite element results.

Findings

Lattice Boltzmann method agrees with finite element results.

Accurately reproduces Darcy's and Forchheimer's laws.

Effective at moderate Reynolds numbers.

Abstract

The lattice Boltzmann method has been successfully applied for the simulation of flow through porous media in the creeping regime. Its technical properties, namely discretization, straightforward implementation and parallelization, are responsible for its popularity. However, flow through porous media is not restricted to near zero Reynolds numbers since inertial effects play a role in numerous natural and industrial processes. In this paper we investigate the capability of the lattice Boltzmann method to correctly describe flow in porous media at moderate Reynolds numbers. The selection of the lattice resolution, the collision kernel and the boundary conditions becomes increasingly important and the challenge is to keep artifacts due to compressibility effects at a minimum. The lattice Boltzmann results show an accurate quantitative agreement with Finite Element Method results and evidence the capability of the method to reproduce Darcy's law at low Reynolds numbers and Forchheimer's law at high Reynolds numbers.