Influence of Wettability on Interfacial Area for Immiscible Liquid Invasion

This chapter aims to investigate how wettability influences αnw during non-wetting phase invasion in a single fracture with self-affine rough surfaces. The successive random additions technique and the lattice Boltzmann method are employed to construct self-affine rough fracture wall surfaces and simulate the evolution of αnw, respectively. Two model verifications are used to verify the entry pressure for non-wetting phase invasion and wetting phase drainage in a fracture. Subsequently, the model is applied to investigate the effect of wettability on flow patterns and the pc- Sw-αnw relationship for four different contact angles. Finally, the correspondence of the results with published αnw-Sw correlations for porous media is examined.