Simulation of Flow in Bidisperse Sphere Packings

Simulation methods were used to construct bidisperse, random sphere packings and to calculate fluid velocities in the pore spaces under a uniform pressure gradient. Based on these calculations, the Kozeny–Carman (KC) relation was found to hold for monodisperse and bidisperse sphere packings (r1/r2 = 2.6) over a range of compositions and Reynolds numbers, using the same KC parameter value (C = 5). These results are consistent with a stronger observation about the similarity of the pore-size and flow distributions. Pore-size distributions were Gaussian for all the simulated packings, and for all bidisperse mixtures and Reynolds numbers examined, the normalized longitudinal velocity distribution collapses onto an exponential distribution when scaled by the mean velocity.