To study internal erosion in depth it is necessary to know either the detailed flow or how it varies in a statistical manner. It is also important to know how the internal erosion process initiates and progresses due to the fluid flow-induced forces. The underlying reason for this is that internal erosion will initiate exactly where the forces from the fluid are higher than the retaining forces that keep the particles together. Hence, a new model is here developed where fluid flow induced deformations of a large number of particles is studied. The model is applied to the No Erosion Filter test and simulated results resemble experimental results from the literature. The NEF test is used to investigate parameters such as the hydraulic conductivity and also in detail the process of internal erosion. The simulations are performed on different set-ups to exemplify successful and unsuccessful sealing. In the model, minimization of the dissipation rate of energy is accompanied with discretization of the system with modified Voronoi diagrams. Then Computational Fluid Dynamics is applied to solve the flow within each part of the Voronoi diagrams. Different parameters, such as the vorticity, calculated with the CFD-software are then used as input to the Monte Carlo-simulations. An overall good conformity between simulated results and experimental results from the literature is obtained.
Godkänd; 2010; Bibliografisk uppgift: Proceedings på CD; 20101014 (gunhel)