Determination of Dynamic Dispersion Coefficient for Solid Particles Flowing in a Fracture With Consideration of Gravity Effect

Abstract

A robust and pragmatic method has been developed and validated to analytically determine dynamic dispersion coefficients for particles flowing in a parallel-plate fracture, in which gravity settling has been considered due to its significant impact on particle flowing behavior. More specifically, a two-dimensional (2D) advection–diffusion equation together with the initial and boundary conditions has been formulated to describe the flow behavior of finite-sized particles on the basis of coupling the Poiseuille flow with vertical settling. Meanwhile, three types of instantaneous source conditions (i.e., point source, uniform line source, and volumetric line source) have been considered. Explicit expressions, which can directly and time-efficiently calculate dynamic dispersion coefficient, have been derived through the moment analysis and the Green’s function method. By performing the simulation based on the random walk particle tracking (RWPT) algorithm, the newly developed model has been verified to determine particle dispersion coefficients agreeing well with those obtained from the RWPT simulations. It is found that the point source is the most sensitive to gravity effect among different source conditions, while the volumetric line source is affected more than the uniform line source. For particle size larger than its critical value, an increased particle size leads to a decreased asymptotical dispersion coefficient for all the source conditions due to the significant gravity effect, while gravity positively affects the dispersion coefficient at early times for the point source condition. In addition, average flow velocity positively affects the dispersion coefficient for all the source conditions, while the associated gravity effect is influenced only at early times for the point source condition.