Department of Physics, NTNU
The topic of my PhD is the thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of immiscible two-phase flow in porous media. These systems can span over an extreme range of length scales. At the scale of individual pores and phase-boundaries, a few nanometers at the smallest, the physical picture is quite different from what is seen at macroscopic scales. Determining the macroscopic flow from the physics at the pore scale, dubbed the «upscaling problem», is what we will attempt to solve.
In the end, the macroscopic phase flow will be described by a general thermodynamic framework, connected to the statistical mechanics of the system. These thermodynamic relations are supplied by constitutive equations which relate the macroscopic flow of the fluid to driving forces. In recent years, it has been shown that a non-linear relation between flow and driving force, e.g. pressure, might occur in porous media systems.
To solve the upscaling problem, we will use numerical network models to examine the predictions of our theory, and verify our results with experiments performed at the PoreLab node at UiO
Supervisors: Alex Hansen and Knut Jørgen Måløy
E-mail: Hakon.Pedersen@ntnu.no