Determination of Physical Properties of Porous Materials by a Lattice Boltzmann Approach

In this work, flows in porous media are simulated by using a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). A model D2Q9 with a single collision operator is proposed. This method is applied on 2D digital images obtained by a Scanning Electron Microscope technique (SEM), and followed by a special treatment in order to obtain an image of synthesis that is finally read by the numerical code. The first results tested on two-dimensional configurations show the reliability of this strategy in simulating with a good accuracy phenomena of heat and mass transport. The numerical study is extended to the prediction of physical parameters that characterize a porous material (in particular, permeability that can be hardly estimated experimentally).