A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SEEPAGE CHARACTERS OF NON-NEWTONIAN FLUIDS IN FRACTAL POROUS MEDIA

摘要

Study of non-Newtonian fluid flow characteristics in porous media has been one of the focuses in the field of transport in porous media. In this paper, a comprehensive study of nonlinear seepage in fractal porous media is performed, and the analytical expressions for the starting pressure gradient of Bingham fluids and power-law fluids as well as the relative permeability of power-law fluids in porous media, are obtained with the effect of capillary pressure included. Each parameter in the proposed models has clear physical meaning. The relationships among the starting pressure gradient, permeability, and relative permeability versus porosity, particle diameters, and wetting phase saturation are obtained, and good agreement between the model predictions and the available experimental data is obtained; the validity of the proposed models is thus verified.