THE MICROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF HIGH FORCHHEIMER NUMBER FLOW IN POROUS-MEDIA

High Forchheimer number flow through a rigid porous medium is numerically analysed by means of the volumetric averaging concept. The microscopic flow mechanisms, which must be known in order to understand the macroscopic flow phenomena, are studied by utilising a periodic diverging-converging representative unit cell (RUC). The detailed information for the microscopic flow field, in association with the locally averaged momentum balance, makes it possible to quantitatively demonstrate that the microscopic inertial phenomenon, which leads to distorted velocity and pressure fields, is the fundamental reason for the onset of nonlinear (non-Darcy) effects as velocity increases. The hydrodynamic definitions for Darcy's law permeability k, the inertial coefficient beta and Forchheimer number Fo are obtained by applying the averaging theorem to the pore level Navier-Stokes equations. Finally, these macroscopic parameters are numerically calculated at various combinations of micro-geometry and flow rate, and graphically correlated with the relevant microscopic parameters.