Synchrotron 4-dimensional imaging of two-phase flow through porous media

Published

July 13, 2016

Author(s)

Felix H. Kim, D. Penumadu, P. Patel, X. Xiao, E. J. Garboczi, Shawn P. Moylan, M A. Donmez

Abstract

Near real-time visualization of complex two-phase flow in a porous medium was demonstrated with dynamic 4D (3D + time) imaging at the 2-BM beam line of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory. Advancing fluid fronts through tortuous flow paths and their interactions with sand grains were clearly captured, and formations of air bubbles and capillary bridges were visualized. The intense X-ray photon flux of the synchrotron facility made 4D imaging possible of capturing the dynamic evolution of both solid and fluid phases. CT scans were collected every 12 s with a pixel size of 3.25 μm. The experiment was carried out to improve understanding of the physics and mechanics associated with two-phase flow. The results provide a source of validation data for numerical simulation codes such as Lattice-Boltzmann, which are used to model multi-phase flow through porous media. An emerging topic of evaluating metal additive manufacturing (AM) parts with X-ray CT (XCT) is also introduced. AM is a revolutionary manufacturing technique for creating complex geometry parts in a near-net shape configuration. Metal-based AM is now widely used for various applications including aerospace and biomedical implants, and the usage is expected to increase. XCT is found to be a promising technique to qualify AM-produced parts with such complex geometries. A laboratory XCT system was used to characterize the AM parts, which were made of CoCr. A major difference in microstructure is revealed between parts produced with different processing parameters. This research is expected to improve the fundamental understanding of AM processing-microstructure-property relationships.

Citation

Journal of Materials Research

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

additive manufacturing

Citation

Kim, F. , Penumadu, D. , Patel, P. , Xiao, X. , Garboczi, E. , Moylan, S. and Donmez, M. (2016), Synchrotron 4-dimensional imaging of two-phase flow through porous media, Journal of Materials Research, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=920495 (Accessed December 13, 2024)