HARMONIC STOKES-FLOW THROUGH PERIODIC POROUS-MEDIA - A 3D BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

Our interest is in dynamic filtration through periodic, porous, saturated media. More precisely, here we develop a three-dimensional numerical model, based on boundary element methods, to compute the dynamic permeability over a wide range of such media. This generalized Darcy coefficient is obtained by the homogenization process applied to a periodic, deformable, porous medium under dynamic solicitations. An unusual choice of Green functions is made. A simple numerical procedure is used for the treatment of the periodic boundary conditions. Recent advances to treat singular integrals are employed and extended to our case. The method is tested on simple examples where theoretical results are available. In the static case results are compared with many previous results on periodic arrays of spheres. New results are given in the dynamic case. The scaling behavior for dynamic permeability in porous media is checked and discussed. © 1992.