2001/10/10 by German Drazer, Germán Drazer, Joel Koplik
Engineering · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Groundwater flow and contamination studies #Landslides and related hazards #Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Studies #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.flu-dyn #physics.geo-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.66.026303
published as Phys. Rev. E 66, 026303 (2002) · submitted to PRE
arxiv created 2001/10/10 · openalex publication_date 2002/08/15 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Transport properties of three-dimensional self-affine rough fractures are studied by means of an effective-medium analysis and numerical simulations using the Lattice-Boltzmann method. The numerical results show that the effective-medium approximation predicts the right scaling behavior of the permeability and of the velocity fluctuations, in terms of the aperture of the fracture, the roughness exponent, and the characteristic length of the fracture surfaces, in the limit of small separation between surfaces. The permeability of the fractures is also investigated as a function of the normal and lateral relative displacements between surfaces, and it is shown that it can be bounded by the permeability of two-dimensional fractures. The development of channel-like structures in the velocity field is also numerically investigated for different relative displacements between surfaces. Finally, the dispersion of tracer particles in the velocity field of the fractures is investigated by analytic and numerical methods. The asymptotic dominant role of the geometric dispersion, due to velocity fluctuations and their spatial correlations, is shown in the limit of very small separation between fracture surfaces.