Characterizing the evolution of porosity and permeability in porous media undergoing pressure solution creep.

Abstract

This work looks at the change in pore-scale morphological properties such as porosity and permeability using modeled sphere packs. The effects of varying pressure, temperature, and stress upon these properties are evaluated in numerically derived sphere packs undergoing creep and elastic compaction processes. This thesis will utilize the abilities of the lattice Boltzmann method and the network model method to determine various morphological properties of these sets of packed spheres. The results from these two methods can be combined to further analyze the relationship between pore space morphology and fluid flow parameters in porous media that can be used to develop correlations to predict permeability based upon the physical structure of the pore space.