How the Porous Media Flow Module Helps Improve Your Modeling

The Porous Media Flow Module is an optional package that extends the COMSOL Multiphysics modeling environment with customized physics interfaces and functionality optimized for the analysis of transport processes in porous media. It combines physics interfaces for fundamental processes and links to COMSOL Multiphysics and the other modules for structural mechanics and electromagnetics analyses. Important in industrial porous media flow, the heat transfer and chemical transport interfaces explicitly account for physics in the liquid, solid, and gas phases and include the possibility to model thermal nonequilibrium. The physics interfaces for heat transfer also include options to automate the calculation of effective thermal properties for multicomponent systems.

The Fluid Flow branch represent a wide range of possibilities. The Richards’ Equation interface describes nonlinear flow in variably saturated porous media. The options for saturated porous media include the Darcy’s Law interface for slow flow and the Brinkman Equations interface where shear is nonnegligible. The Laminar Flow interface uses the Navier–Stokes equations to cover free flows, and the Fracture Flow interface is used for modeling flow along thin layers and fractures.

This module also treats the transport of chemicals and their reactions with the Chemical Species Transport branch. The Transport of Diluted Species in Porous Media interface accounts for chemical transfer in solid, liquid, and gas phases for free and porous media flows. The Porous Media Flow Module Application Library includes a number of examples linking these physics interfaces together.

Predefined multiphysics couplings make it possible to conveniently model poroelastic effects and multiphase transport processes.