Fluid transients in heterogeneous fluid-saturated porous geomaterials

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for modelling fluid transients within a heterogeneous fluid-saturated porous medium, through the consideration of the effective parameters that can describe heterogeneity. This enables the application of the classical theory of piezo-conduction to the study of fluid transients in a porous medium where the permeability exhibits heterogeneity. The paper describes recent research that lead to the development of a measure for the effective permeability of a porous medium with hydraulic heterogeneity and presents the basic approach for examining the poroelasticity problem for a fluid-saturated medium with physical, hydraulic and elastic heterogeneity that can exhibit direct correlations. A computational procedure can be applied to validate the approach that represents the effective elasticity properties through mathematical relationships developed in the literature.