Using virtual reality and percolation theory to visualize fluid flow in porous media

Abstract

The study of the fluid flow process through porous media can bring valuable contributions in areas like oil exploration and environmental research. In this work, we propose an interactive tool, named VRFluid, that allows visual interpretation of the three-dimensional data generated by the simulation of the fluid flow the porous media. VRFluid comprises a virtual reality engine that provides stereo visualization of the three-dimensional data, and a simulation engine based on a dynamic percolation method to model the fluid flow. VRFluid is composed of two independent main threads, the percolation simulator and the rendering server, that can operate in parallel as a pipeline. We tested our tool on a region of a mature field database, supervised by geophysicists, and obtained images of the interior of the percolation data, providing important results for the interpretation and cluster formation process.