Prof. Veronica L. Morales
University of California, Davis, USA
Abstract: Accurately describing the flow of and mass transport in porous media is central to many environmental applications spanning groundwater hydrology, oil recovery and geotechnics. Flow and transport phenomena significantly differ between simple and complex porous media. The complexity of the pore-space gives rise to convoluted flow paths that can span from extremely fast to extremely slow. Such flow organization complicates transport behavior and creates reaction hotspots that are difficult to predict. To this end, this talk will discuss work carried out to understand large-scale behavior as a reflection of the millions of interactions between the moving fluid and the pore-spaces of the medium. The first part of the talk will address key statistical rules of particle motion at the pore-scale and their implementation in an upscaling model for mass transport. We demonstrate how our model accurately captures the changeover from intense to weak spreading, which is poorly understood but crucial for problems in groundwater contamination. The second part of the talk focuses on flow organization and recasts flow path resistance into a graph-theory problem. Through this work we learn where and why preferential pathways form based on structural information of the porous medium alone.
Host：Prof. Cheng Gu
Executive Editor
Nanjing University
Time：9:00am August 2, 2022 (Beijing time)
Zoom ID: 816 9975 7155
Bilibili: 25002335
