Network modelling of yield-stress fluid flow in randomly disordered porous media

TL;DR

This paper introduces a pore-network model for yield-stress fluid flow in disordered porous media, capturing nonlinear transport, channelisation, wall slip effects, and the influence of pore geometry on pressure losses.

Contribution

The authors develop a physics-based pore-network model that accurately predicts yield-stress fluid flow and channelisation without fitted parameters, including wall slip effects.

Findings

Model reproduces bulk pressure drop and flow topology evolution.

Wall slip reduces pressure gradient and reactivates blocked pathways.

Near-yield pressure losses depend on constriction statistics, not obstacle size.

Abstract

Yield-stress fluid flow through porous media is governed by a strong coupling between rheology and pore-scale geometry, leading to nonlinear, non-Darcy transport and pronounced channelisation near yielding. We develop a pore-network model for Herschel-Bulkley flow in two-dimensional disordered porous media, including optional wall slip. The network is closed by a physics-based pressure-flow relation for a converging-diverging throat, so that yielding and post-yield transport emerge directly from the pore-scale fluid mechanics without fitted resistance parameters. Benchmarking against direct numerical simulations shows that the model captures both the bulk pressure drop and the evolution of the flow topology from spatially distributed transport to strongly channelised flow. The framework also captures the leading effect of wall slip, which lowers the pressure gradient required for transport and reactivates pathways that remain blocked in the no-slip case. Using the model across different porous geometries, we show that near-yield pressure losses are governed by constriction statistics rather than by an obstacle-scale length. In particular, rescaling with the domain-averaged minimum throat width collapses the plastic-dominated response across porosities, identifying the dissipation-relevant geometric scale for viscoplastic transport in this regime.