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Original Article | Open Access

Numerical modeling of unsaturated flow in porous media using a thermodynamical approach

Key Laboratory of Rock Mechanics and Geohazards of Zhejiang Province, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing 312000, P. R. China
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Hubei Engineering University, Xiaogan 432000, P. R. China
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Abstract

The Richards equation has been widely used to describe unsaturated flow in porous media, but its thermodynamical consistency has been scarcely investigated. In this paper, a thermodynamically consistent formulation of Richards equation is established on the basis of the free energy concept and the second law of thermodynamics. The capillary effect is described by an interfacial free energy and its corresponding chemical potential. The formulation takes the water saturation as the primary variable as well as chemical potential gradient as the primary driving force. An appealing feature is that the formulation follows an energy dissipation law, which implies the consistency to the second law of thermodynamics. Furthermore, a linearized and energy stable time discretized method is proposed for the model. Numerical results confirms the thermodynamical consistency of the formulation.

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Capillarity
Pages 63-69
Cite this article:
Kou J, Wang X. Numerical modeling of unsaturated flow in porous media using a thermodynamical approach. Capillarity, 2024, 11(3): 63-69. https://doi.org/10.46690/capi.2024.06.01

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Received: 07 February 2024
Revised: 22 February 2024
Accepted: 10 March 2024
Published: 14 March 2024
© The Author(s) 2024.

This article is distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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