Carina Bringedal

Arbeids- og kompetanseområde

My research focuses on modeling and simulation of flow and transport in porous media. Porous media are media consisting of both solid space and void space, in which a fluid can flow. This can for example be sponges or soil. Technical applications like fuel cells also use porous materials. For such porous media I am interested in how to model and simulate flow and transport, in particular when there are coupled processes and interactions between scales. Coupled processes can for example be that the fluid contains a dissolved solute which can precipitate as a solid and hence change the structure of the porous medium. In terms of scales, I am focusing on the pore scale and averaged Darcy scale: on the pore scale one can describe the location of fluid and solid explicitly, while on the averaged Darcy scale one only uses averages like the amount of fluid and solid in a certain volume. Such averaged models are useful when simulating large applications like geothermal reservoirs, but can be difficult to find. Hence, in my research I try to find improved models for how coupled processes interact with each other in these scales, to allow efficient simulations of large applications. These processes are also typically nonlinear and I am also interested in designing good nonlinear solver schemes.