NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TORTUOSITY FOR FLUID FLOW IN TWO-DIMENSIONAL PORE FRACTAL MODELS OF POROUS MEDIA

Abstract

The tortuosity is a very important parameter for description of fluid flow in porous media, and it has been shown that porous media in nature have the fractal characteristics. The Sierpinski carpet is an exactly self-similar fractal model, which is often used to simulate fractal porous media. In this work, the tortuosity of different generations of Sierpinski carpet is calculated and analyzed by the finite volume method. A simple linear relation between the generations and tortuosity in pore fractal model of porous media is obtained. The results are compared with the available conclusions and show a more realistic tortuosity predication for fluid flow in the two-dimensional pore fractal models of porous media.