A numerical study of pressure changes in dead-end pores

Abstract

Dead-end pores are usually present in natural porous media especially in consolidated sandstone and limestone rocks. However, the presence of the dead-end pores is usually ignored. Then, the influences of the dead end pores to the flow system are also neglected. In this paper, pressure changes for the periods of transient and steady state of the dead-end pores are studied using lattice gas automata model. A simulation result is compared with the past works. They show that the model is viable to perform simulation of dead-end pore pressure. Some parameters such as pressure distribution and size of neck and body of the dead-end pores are varied to examine their effects. We found that the parameters affect the rate of pressure change during transient period. In addition, the parameters also affect the pressure fluctuation during steady state period. The dead-end pores have function either as source or sink in the transient period depend on initial and injection pressures. During steady state period, the dead-end pores behave both as source and sink since the pressure in the pores fluctuates around an equilibrium pressure between the pressure of dead-end pore and that of main channel at the neck position of dead-end pore.