Relative permeability and capillary pressure are the governing parameters that characterize multiphase fluid flow in porous media for diverse natural and industrial applications, including surface water infiltration into the ground, CO₂ sequestration, and hydrocarbon enhanced recovery. Although the drastic effects of deformation of porous media on single-phase fluid flow have been well established, the stress dependency of flow in multiphase systems is not yet fully explored. Here, stress-dependent relative permeability and capillary pressure are studied in a water-wet carbonate specimen both analytically using fractal and poroelasticity theory and experimentally on the micro-scale and macro-scales by means of X-ray computed micro-tomography and isothermal isotropic triaxial core flooding cell, respectively. Our core flooding program using water/N₂ phases shows a systematic decrease in the irreducible water saturation and gas relative permeability in response to an increase in effective stress. Intuitively, a leftward shift of the intersection point of water/gas relative permeability curves is interpreted as an increased affinity of the rock to the gas phase. Using a micro-scale proxy model, we identify a leftward shift in pore size distribution and closure of micro-channels to be responsible for the abovementioned observations. These findings prove the crucial impact of effective stress-induced pore deformation on multiphase flow properties of rock, which are missing from the current characterizations of multiphase flow mechanisms in porous media.

Fluid injection and withdrawal in a porous medium create changes in pore pressure that alter effective stresses within the medium. This leads to pore volume changes, which can be described by the poroelastic theory. These changes in pore volume can influence fluid flow processes, such as capillary diffusion and imbibition, potentially altering multiphase flow characteristics in subsurface reservoirs with a focus on oil recovery in the naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs. In this study, a semi‐analytical model is developed to analyze the impact of stress‐dependent spontaneous imbibition. The model allows us to study the influence of stress‐dependent effects on porosity, absolute permeability, relative permeability, and capillary pressure on the imbibition and oil recovery mechanisms of both intact rock and fracture in naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs. In order to capture the geomechanical interactions involved, pure compliance poroelastic definitions and nonlinear joint normal stiffness equations are used to assess the deformation of intact rock and fracture, respectively. The model shows that increasing effective confining stress shifts the imbibition capillary pressure curve upward, resulting in improved absorption of the wetting phase into the smaller pores and enhanced extraction of the nonwetting phase. Model calculations provide a rationale for how and why irreducible water saturation increases during compression of mixed‐wet carbonates and decreases in the case of initially strong water‐wet carbonates. It is also shown how higher relative permeability of the wetting phase leads to a greater diffusion of the wetting phase and improved oil recovery for the less deformed mixed‐wet rock.

In this study, changes in the hydrodynamic properties of Berea sandstone at a constant temperature of 40 °C are reported as effective confining stress is increased to 30 MPa. Through a novel consecutive approach, porosity, absolute permeability, drainage relative permeability, and drainage capillary pressure were shown to systematically change with effective stress. The relative permeability measurements were taken using a steady‐state method for the N₂/water fluid pair. A second method, in which a saturated core with the wetting phase was flushed with the non‐wetting phase at an increasing flow rate, was used to determine the drainage capillary pressure. Core saturation was determined using a gas separation unit and mass‐balance considerations. This study revealed a decrease in porosity and absolute permeability, from 13.16% and 58 mD to 12.24% and 36 mD, respectively, with the increase in effective confining stress. In terms of relative permeability curves, this study showed a systematic decrease in irreducible wetting phase saturation from 0.44 to 0.24 as effective stress increased; this could be interpreted in core‐scale as a progressive tendency of the initially water‐wet Berea sandstone to the gas phase. The capillary pressure curve also presented an upward shift in response to increased effective stress. These changes in the hydrodynamic rock properties with stress suggest that scaling flow parameters of porous media under effective stress conditions may be required to accurately predict flow behavior under conditions of changing stress.

Over the last century, the state of stress in the earth’s upper crust has undergone rapid changes because of human activities associated with fluid withdrawal and injection in subsurface formations. The stress dependency of multiphase flow mechanisms in earth materials is a substantial challenge to understand, quantify, and model for many applications in groundwater hydrology, applied geophysics, CO₂ subsurface storage, and the wider geoenergy field (e.g., geothermal energy, hydrogen storage, hydrocarbon recovery). Here, we conduct core-scale experiments using N₂/water phases to study primary drainage followed by spontaneous imbibition in a carbonate specimen under increasing isotropic effective stress and isothermal conditions. Using X-ray computed micro-tomography images of the unconfined specimen, we introduce a novel coupling approach to reconstruct pore-deformation and simulate multiphase flow inside the deformed pore-space followed by a semi-analytical calculation of spontaneous imbibition. We show that the irreducible water saturation increases while the normalized volume of spontaneously imbibed water into the specimen decreases (46–25%) in response to an increase in effective stress (0–30 MPa), leading to higher residual gas saturations. Furthermore, the imbibition rate decreases with effective stress, which is also predicted by a numerical model, due to a decrease in water relative permeability as the pore-space becomes more confined and tortuous. This fundamental study provides new insights into the physics of multiphase fluid transport, CO₂ storage capacity, and recovery of subsurface resources incorporating the impact of poromechanics.