Join us for a webinar by Prof. Anugrah Singh on 13 October 2026 (Tuesday) at 4:00 PM (IST).

Abstract: Understanding the suspension transport in porous media at pore-scale is crucial in many applications such as filtration, groundwater treatment, proppant transport during hydraulic fracturing, and sand control from the producing oil wells. The dynamics of suspended particles in the porous media is influenced by the intricate structure and interactions within the porous framework. We have numerically investigated the transport of non-colloidal suspension moving through porous media using Stokesian dynamics method as well as continuum based models. The hydrodynamic interactions as well as inter-particle non-hydrodynamic forces between the suspension particles and the fixed grain particle have a strong influence on the particle trajectories. The suspended particle undergo rapid fluctuations while moving through the tortuous flow path and the porosity strongly affects the fluctuation velocity. In the low Reynolds number limit the fluctuation velocity was observed to vary linearly with the particle concentration and average suspension velocity. The dynamics of suspended particles were studied in dual porosity systems and it was observed that the particle migrate from high porosity to the low porosity regions. While the particle level simulations provide detailed description of particle trajectories, their use in large porous media is limited due to high computational cost. We have also studied the particle migration behaviour at pore-scale using the numerical simulations based on a continuum Diffusive Flux Model. In regular arrangements, specific configurations caused wavy flow paths that enhanced particle migration. The random porous media forced particles through multiple tortuous pathways, clustering near pore throats instead of migrating toward the center unlike the migration in channel flows. Particles near grains experienced prolonged retention due to complex paths and strong hydrodynamic interactions. Higher particle concentrations resulted in cluster formation, leading to velocity drift, while dilute suspensions showed significant fluctuations, highlighting the concentration-dependent transport behavior in the porous media.

About the Speaker: Dr. Anugrah Singh is currently a senior professor in the department of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He holds B.Tech. and M.Tech. degree in petroleum engineering from the ISM Dhanbad, and PhD in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. After completing PhD he worked at Fluent India, Pune as a CFD engineer and served there for three year before moving to Technion (Israel) for postdoctoral research. He joined IIT Guwahati in 2004. Dr. Singh has more than 30 years of research experience in the field of Multiphase Flow, Flow through Porous Media and Rheology of Complex Fluids. Dr. Singh was awarded Indo-US science and technology forum fellowship in 2010, and was a visiting
faculty at the California Institute of Technology, USA.