Identifying the representative flow unit for capillary dominated two-phase flow in porous media using morphology-based pore-scale modeling

In this paper, we extend pore-morphology-based methods proposed by Hazlett (1995) and Hilpert and Miller (2001) to simulate drainage and imbibition in uniformly wetting porous media and add an (optional) entrapment of the (non-)wetting phase. By improving implementation, this method allows us to identify the statistical representative elementary volume and estimate uncertainty by computing fluid flow properties and saturation distributions of hundreds of subsamples within a reasonable time-frame. The method was utilized to study three different porous medium systems and results demonstrate that morphology-based pore-scale modeling is a viable approach to assess the representative elementary volume with respect to capillary dominated two-phase flow. The focus of this paper is the determination of the representative elementary volume for multiphase-flow properties for a digital representation of a rock.