Direct numerical simulation of proppant transport in a narrow channel for hydraulic fracturing application

Abstract

An efficient and accurate model for the direct numerical simulations (DNS) of liquid-solid flows is presented in this work. In this numerical model, fluid-solid coupling is achieved by implementing the no-slip boundary condition at the particles’ surfaces by using a second order ghost-cell immersed boundary method, allowing for a fixed Cartesian grid to be used for solving the fluid equations. The particle-particle and particle-wall interactions are implemented using the soft sphere collision model. Lubrication forces are included through a sub-grid scale model because of its range of influence on a scale smaller than the grid size.
After the validation of the model, the transport of solid particles in a narrow channel is simulated to mimic the proppant transport in rock fractures in fracking process. The simulations are performed for solids volume fractions ranging from 1.7 to 20 % with the range of Reynolds and Archimedes number: 100-400 and 0-7848, respectively.