OpenPNM is an open-source code to simulate multi-phase flow within porous media. It is based on a pore-network approach, i.e. the complex morphology of solid and non-solid space within a porous medium is abstracted by a network of pores and throats. Typically an analytical solution or a 1D numerical solution can be derived for each pair of pores connected by a throat. Hence instead of solving the governing equations for multiphase flow on a complex geometry, a much simpler system of algebraic or ordinary differential equation can be solved.
Development Team
The core development team for OpenPNM is located at the Porous Materials Engineering & Analysis Lab (PMEAL) led by Dr. Jeff Gostick. A small but dedicated team is constantly updating and extending the code base. The AFCC Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation Corp. was an early and long time sponsor of this project. The development page is located at Github.
As this is an Open Source project, anyone is welcome to join the development team.
License and Attribution
OpenPNM is released under the MIT license, hence free to use and to extend under a very permissive license.
As a courtesy to the authors and the considerable work which has gone into this package, the authors ask to cite the following article in an academic publication:
Operating System Requirements
OpenPNM can run within any running python environment on any operating system. It is Python 3.X compliant. I personally run an Anaconda python environment. The following commands create the environment used in this post:
conda create -n pnm python=3.5 anaconda
source activate pnmpip install OpenPNM
The 3D visualizations are created by Paraview. I tried, and failed, to use Mayavi2 with Python 3.5 directly within the Jupyer notebook. I think Mayavi2 and Python 3.X needs a little more time to mature.
Publications
OpenPNM has been used in several publications. For a growing list of paper, pleas check this google scholar link.
Feature Highlights

Python Ecosystem

Topology Generation

Topology Manipulation

Geomerty Engine

Physics Engine

Algorithm Library
OpenPNM Basic Architecture
The core classes of OpenPNM inherit from the dictionary class. Below is a simple ingeritance diagram of the core OpenPNM classes.

Class architecture and inheritance diagram of OpenFCST (taken from the OpenFCST documentation).
Small Showcase Demonstrations
Based on the online example library, I have created a few small demonstration simulations and visualizations.
- Mercury Intrusion Porisimetry (MIP) on a cubic network with random pore and throat sizes,
- Mercury Intrusion Porisimetry (MIP) on a random Delaunay network.
- Ordinary Percolation (OP) on a random Delaunay network.
MIP on a random cubic network
Topology and Geometry Setup
OpenPNM comes with a machinery to create various topologies and geometries. The topology generates the number of pores (or nodes in network theory language) and connects them by throats (edges). Basic operations can now be executed: check for connected regions, connectivity plots and some others. The geometry generators attach some geometric information to the topolgy: e.g. pore sizes, throat sizes, throat lengths, …
In the statistical plot below, we can observe that the pore and throat diameters are discretely drawn from a normal distribution. The coordicantio number shows the eight corner node with a coordination number of three, the edge nodes (4), face nodes (5) and internal node (6).
MIP algorithm
The drainage algorithm simulates a capillary drainage experiment by applying a list of increasing capillary pressures and invading all throats that are accessible and invadable at the given pressure.
The capillary pressure is calculated based on the throat radius, the surface tension of the invading phase and the contact angle. In this particular case the invading fluid is mercury. The algorithm returns the drainage curve (right) and attaches the step in which a praticular pore was invaded as well as the pressure at invasion time. This allows us to create a visualization of the invasion sequence in Paraview (below).
MIP on a random Delaunay Network
Topology and Geometry Setup
In the previous example, we have generated a simple cubic network. In this example we will use randomly placed points to generate our network. The main problem for random points is to figure out which points should be connected. One solution to this problem is to utilize a suite of tools used in the meshing community: Delaunay Triangulations and Voronoi Diagrams. The image on the left shows one example of such a network. Additional pores were added on the cube boundary to allow for an easy identification of injection pores. The very simplistic approach used in this algorithm generates artificially large pores close to the outer faces of the geometry. To generate a more realistic porous medium, the detection and generation of boundary face pores has to be done with more care and sophistication.
Geometric properties
Now the sizes of pores and throats needs to be calculated. IN this example we will use the Voronoi diagram of the Delaunay tessellation to find the shape of pores and throats. The image below shows the pores and pore edges generated by the Voronoi diagram. The green dots denote the pore centres given by the Delaunay points.
To simplify the visualization, OpenPNM allows to select a specific pore and draw the cross sections of all connected pores. The pore selected in the plot before is connected to six other pores (hence coordination number of 6)

Calculation of the fibre sizing. The black and green lines denote the polygonal cage of connected pores, the red circle denotes the throat diameter.
As observed before, our simplistic addition of boundary pores, leads to some obvious anomalies in the distributions shown below: The boundary pores only connect to one internal pore, hence their coordination number is 1. The boundary pores have volume 0, to not influence the saturation calculation.

Histogram of the key geometric properties: throat diameter, pore diameter, throat lengths and coordination numbers.
Similarity to fibrous materials

A cross section of the porous network defined by the Delaunay/voronoi algorithm pair. White denotes fibres, black the void space.
One of the attractions of this type of network is the similarity to fibrous materials. OpenPNM allows to visualize (see right image) a cross section of this geometry type and one can observe a striking similarity to real materials (e.g. gas diffusion layers for fuel cell applications).
MIP algorithm
The drainage algorithm simulates a capillary drainage experiment by applying a list of increasing capillary pressures and invading all throats that are accessible and invadable at the given pressure.
The capillary pressure is calculated based on the throat radius, the surface tension of the invading phase and the contact angle. In this particular case the invading fluid is mercury. The algorithm returns the drainage curve (right) and attaches the step in which a praticular pore was invaded as well as the pressure at invasion time. This allows us to create a visualization of the invasion sequence in Paraview (below).
OP on a random Delaunay Network
Topology and Geometry Setup
The topology and geometry for ths section is identical to the previous one.
OP algorithm
The drainage algorithm simulates a capillary drainage experiment by applying a list of increasing capillary pressures and invading all throats that are accessible and invadable at the given pressure. In contrast to the previous section, the invading fluid is now water instead of mercury.
The capillary pressure is calculated based on the throat radius, the surface tension of the invading phase and the contact angle. In this particular case the invading fluid is mercury. The algorithm returns the drainage curve (right) and attaches the step in which a praticular pore was invaded as well as the pressure at invasion time. This allows us to create a visualization of the invasion sequence in Paraview (below).
Conclusions and Additional Material
Conclusions
This was a quick introduction to the OpenPNM package. Using the Delaunay/Voronoy topology and geometry generators, we managed to create almost realistic looking fibrous materials. For more realistic simulations, a few more steps would be required, but I think the general idea is visible.
For more information, please visit the project page and the excellent examples and documentation available through it.
Additional Material
Bitbucket Repository
The Bitbucket repository for this worksheet can be found here.
It can be viewed below or in a full screen Jupyter-Notebook window or below in a smaller iframe:
Jupyter Notebook
Changelog
Action | Date | Description |
Creation + Publication | 2017.09.08 | Initial publication through WordPress. Forwards to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN |
Status | Completed |
Disclaimer
I am doing this as a hobby, so take all of this with care …
License to Graphs and Photos
Unless otherwise stated all figures are published under the most non restrictive Creative Commons License:
To the extent possible under law, Andreas Putz has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to the graphs and material shown above.