OUR STORY

Research

Modeling and Simulation

We will conduct continuum simulations based on lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) of the nanoemulsion PCM and particle sedimentation in drilling fluid. The continuum simulations will enable us to gain overall understanding of hydrodynamic interactions of water/oil interface, particles, and capillary bridging phenomena, and suggest the optimal geometrical characteristics and material properties for the PCM and barite particles. As any physical situation that involves multiple fluid components such as water and oil, and solid particles (in OBDF) and paraffin particles in water (in PCM nanoemulsion) may be difficult to investigate experimentally in a fully controlled manner, insight can be gained by supplementing experiments with an appropriate computational model. CCNY team will develop a Fluid-Fluid-Particle (FFP) LBM. It incorporates fully coupled interaction between drops, immersed solid particles, and the ambient atmosphere. 

The fluid components obey the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations (LBM), while the particles are transported according to Newtonian dynamics. This research task will address a few outstanding computational issues in our FFP-LBM model improving mass conservation in the vicinity of triple contact line on particles and reducing computational stencils required in the calculation of surface tension force. It will also enhance parallel efficiency of the particle-fluid solver that enables us to tackle larger system. Our German collaborators (KIT) will develop an LBM with discrete element method (DEM) that is better suited for coarse-grained large scale particulate flow simulations. CCNY team will further develop liquid-particle DEM-LBM code that is under development by KIT for FFP simulations by incorporating two-fluid models.

CCNY Faculty: Taehun Lee, Joel Koplik, Sanjoy Banerjee,

Ph.D. Students: Geng Liu, Shaghayegh Darjani, Yu Han, Chunheng Zhao, Jahnvi Trivedi

KIT: Mathias J. Krause

U. Hamburg: Philipp Neumann

LCPQ: Aude Simon