Averaging of unsteady flows in heterogeneous media of stationary conductivity

Abstract

A procedure for deriving equations of average unsteady flows in random media of stationary conductivity is developed. The approach is based on applying perturbation methods in the Fourier-Laplace domain. The main result of the paper is the formulation of an effective Darcy's Law relating the mean velocity to the mean head gradient. In the Fourier-Laplace domain the averaged Darcy's Law is given by a linear local relation. The coefficient of proportionality depends only on the heterogeneity structure and is called the effective conductivity tensor. In the physical domain this relation has a non-local structure and it defines the effective conductivity as an integral operator of convolution type in time and space. The mean head satisfies an unsteady integral-differential equation. The kernel of the integral operator is the inverse Fourier-Laplace transform (FLT) of the effective conductivity tensor. The FLT of the mean head is obtained as a product of two functions: the first describes the FLT of the mean head distribution in a homogeneous medium; the second corrects the solution in a homogeneous medium for the given spatial distribution of heterogeneities. This function is simply related to the effective conductivity tensor and determines the fundamental solution of the governing equation for the mean head. These general results are applied to derive the effective conductivity tensor for small variances of the conductivity. The properties of unsteady average flows in isotropic media are studied by analysing a general structure of the effective Darcy's Law. It is shown that the transverse component of the effective conductivity tensor does not affect the mean flow characteristics. The effective Darcy's Law is obtained as a convolution integral operator whose kernel is the inverse FLT of the effective conductivity longitudinal component. The results of the analysis are illustrated by calculating the effective conductivity for one-, two- and three-dimensional flows. An asymptotic model of the effective Darcy's Law, applicable for distances from the sources of mean flow non-uniformity much larger than the characteristic scale of heterogeneity, is developed. New bounds for the effective conductivity tensor, namely the effective conductivity tensor for steady non-uniform average flow and the arithmetic mean, are proved for weakly heterogeneous media.