A pore-scale mathematical modeling of fluid-particle interactions: Thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling

Fluid flow, deformation and thermal conduction are all important phenomena that could occur concurrently in porous media. In several applications related to porous media modeling, fluid is often injected with a different temperature. Such a discrepancy, and at the same time the flow-induced deformation, can lead to a momentous alteration, which necessitates a simultaneous consideration of all these factors. In this study, thus, a joined mathematical thermo-hydro-mechanical framework for studying the effects of external forces, the presence of fluid and thermal variation is presented. The coupled method is based on a combination of Discrete Element Method and Computational Fluid Dynamics for simulating the solid and the fluid-flow, respectively. The momentum exchange and the heat transfer induced by particle-particle and particle-fluid interactions are computed. The proposed method is tested on a relatively large spherical packed sample and various parameters, such as displacement, exchanged forces, fluid velocity, temperature and heat fluxes are evaluated for three scenarios with different Reynolds numbers. The results indicate a very clear difference between the abovementioned parameters in terms of their statistical distributions and approve the necessity of coupling such paymasters in porous media modeling.