Assessment of the validity of Stokes and Reynolds equations for fluid flow through a rough-walled fracture with flow imaging

Understanding fluid flow through a rough‐walled fracture is important in many problems such as petroleum and geothermal reservoir exploitation, geological storage of CO2, and sitting of radioactive waste repositories. In order to advance the understanding of fracture flow, we conducted the first dir...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical research letters 2014-07, Vol.41 (13), p.4578-4585
Main Authors: Lee, Seung Hyun, Lee, Kang-Kun, Yeo, In Wook
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon dioxide
Flow measurement
Flow rate
Flow rates
Flow velocity
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Fracture mechanics
Mathematical analysis
Navier-Stokes equations
Radioactive wastes
Reynolds equation
rough-walled fractures
Stokes equation
Stokes law (fluid mechanics)
validity
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Summary:Understanding fluid flow through a rough‐walled fracture is important in many problems such as petroleum and geothermal reservoir exploitation, geological storage of CO2, and sitting of radioactive waste repositories. In order to advance the understanding of fracture flow, we conducted the first direct measurement of flow velocity across rough‐walled fractures at Reynolds number (Re) of 0.014 to 0.086. The results were used for an order of magnitude analysis to evaluate assumptions underlying the Stokes and the Reynolds equations, which are derived from simplifying the Navier–Stokes equations. Even at very rough subregions, viscous forces were at least 2 orders of magnitude greater than inertial forces, indicating that the Stokes equations are valid for Re 
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1002/2014GL060481