Dissipative Particle Dynamics and Other Particle Methods for Multiphase Fluid Flow in Fractured and Porous Media

Particle methods are much less computationally efficient than grid based numerical solution of the Navier Stokes equation, and they have been used much less extensively, particularly for engineering applications. However, they have important advantages for some applications. These advantages include rigorous mass conservation, momentum conservation and isotropy. In addition, there is no need for explicit interface tracking/capturing. Code development effort is relatively low, and it is relatively simple to simulate flows with moving boundaries. In addition, it is often quite easy to include coupling of fluid flow with other physical phenomena such a phase separation. Here we describe the application of three particle methods: molecular dynamics, dissipative particle dynamics and smoothed particle hydrodynamics. While these methods were developed to simulate fluids and other materials on three quite different scales – the molecular, meso and continuum scales, they are very closely related from a computational point of view. The mesoscale (between the molecular and continuum scales) dissipative particle dynamics method can be used to simulate systems that are too large to simulate using molecular dynamics but small enough for thermal fluctuations to play an important role. Important examples include polymer solutions, gels, small particle suspensions and membranes. In these applications inter particle and intra molecular hydrodynamic interactions are automatically included