Multiscale Simulation of Immiscible Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media with Application to Liquid Composite Molding and Electrolyte Injection

Immiscible two-phase flow in porous media plays a crucial role in numerous natural and industrial processes. Simulation of these processes enhances their understanding and can help optimize them. This work focuses on two industrial applications: liquid composite molding, an industrial process for producing high-quality composites, and electrolyte injection in lithium-ion batteries.

In this work, an efficient multiscale simulation framework for the simulation of immiscible two-phase flow in porous media is introduced. The multiscale simulation framework consists of a dynamic two-phase flow simulation at the largest length scale and the efficient calculation of the required material parameters on lower length scales. For the dynamic simulation, an iterative IMPES (IMplicit Pressure Explicit Saturation) method with a newly developed timestep criterion is introduced and validated. For the efficient calculation of material parameters at lower length scales, pore-morphology methods are employed and generalized to length scales that contain effective porous materials as well as solid-free pores.