3D Cellular Automata as a Computational Tool to Generate Artificial Porous Media

Abstract

In modern geotechnical engineering, the study of the geometry of the porous matrix has been shown to be of fundamental importance. This emerges from the growing usage of numerical methods, which require a computational domain that best represents the simulated medium. Based on those needs, the present paper analyzed and validated the usage of cellular automata as a way to generate a physical-computational model for porous media. First, the possibility of obtaining flow parameters by means of pore-scale simulations in computational domains was discussed. Then, with respect to the three-dimensional (3D) cellular automata (CA), a complete study was performed to obtain rules that are of interest to represent the porous media. This study contemplated the evaluation of porosity and permeability of the artificial medium under the concepts of a representative elementary volume (REV). Finally, a real sand porous medium was modeled by an artificial CA medium, showing that the methodology proposed is applicable to mimicking real porous media.