Seepage clogging characteristics of rock and soil porous media using LBM-IMB-DEM simulation method

Seepage clogging in rock and soil porous media is essentially the result of the coupling action of seepage and solid particles. A numerical computing platform based on the coupled lattice Boltzmann method-immersed moving boundary-discrete element method (LBM-IMB-DEM) is developed and used to simulate the seepage clogging process in rock and soil porous media. Based on the simulated results, the influences of distribution of skeleton particles, size of skeleton particles, porosity, orientation of skeleton particles and water pressure on the seepage clogging characteristics are analyzed. The results show that different spatial distributions of skeleton particles in the porous media result in different clogging characteristics. The smaller the skeleton particle size or the porosity of porous media is, the more the retained particles are after clogging and the more severe the clogging is. The orientation of skeleton particles in the porous media has a certain influence on clogging, and the clogging is the worst when the skeleton particles are strip-shaped and their long axes are all perpendicular to the flow direction. With the increase of water pressure, the retained particles tend to disperse in the porous media and the clogging is more serious. The clogging in the porous media is closely related to their permeability before clogging, and the porous media with high permeability are relatively less prone to clogging.