NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF TWO-PHASE FLOW IN POROUS MEDIA USING THE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

This thesis presents a numerical investigation of two-phase incompressible flow in porous media. With a focus on validating simulation results against experimental results. Using the finite element library deal.II, we simulate a polymer–diesel displacement experiment conducted in a homogeneous rectangular core sample. The governing equations are discretized by a mixed finite element method, and the constructed linear system is solved using a block-structured iterative solver. Two computational strategies are examined, uniform mesh refinement and adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) guided by saturation gradients. Simulation results are compared with saturation fronts at multiple time steps with experimental results. The results show that the numerical model captures the displacement dynamics with high accuracy. Moreover, the AMR approach reduces computational cost while maintaining accuracy, confirming its potential applicability for large-scale simulations of multi-phase flow. This work emphasizes the practical usability of open-source finite element frameworks in replicating and understanding complex subsurface flow movement.