Characteristics of unsteady flow in porous media while considering threshold pressure gradient with Green’s function

Abstract

The flow behavior in porous media with threshold pressure gradient (TPG) is more complex than Darcy flow and the equations of motion, and outer boundary and inner boundary with TPG are also different from Darcy flow for unsteady flow of a producing well in a reservoir. An analytic method to solve this kind of problem is in a need of reestablishment. The classical method of Green’s function and Newman product principle in a new way are used to solve the unsteady state flow problems of various shapes of well and reservoir while considering the TPG. Four Green’s functions of point, line, band and circle while considering the TPG are achieved. Then, two well models of vertical well and horizontal well are built and simultaneously the function to calculate the moving boundary of each well model is provided. The results show that when considering TPG the pressure field is much different, which has a sudden pressure change, with a moving boundary in it. And the moving boundary of each well model increases with time but slows down rapidly, especially when the TGP is large.

Keywords

non-Darcy flow / Green’s function / moving boundary / threshold pressure gradient (TPG)

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