Numerical investigations of two-phase flow with dynamic capillary pressure in porous media via a moving mesh method

Abstract

{©} 2017 Elsevier Inc.Motivated by observations of saturation overshoot, this paper investigates numerical modeling of two-phase flow in porous media incorporating dynamic capillary pressure. The effects of the dynamic capillary coefficient, the infiltrating flux rate and the initial and boundary values are systematically studied using a traveling wave ansatz and efficient numerical methods. The traveling wave solutions may exhibit monotonic, non-monotonic or plateau-shaped behavior. Special attention is paid to the non-monotonic profiles. The traveling wave results are confirmed by numerically solving the partial differential equation using an accurate adaptive moving mesh solver. Comparisons between the computed solutions using the Brooks–Corey model and the laboratory measurements of saturation overshoot verify the effectiveness of our approach.