Flow rate model calculation

Hello!

I want to calculate the flow rate in a DFN model. I used the function flowplane.zone.discharge to obtain the flow vectors within a loop foreach over flowplane.zone.list, with block fluid crack-flow on enabled. Then, I applied math.mag to compute the discharge magnitude in m²/s. Finally, I multiplied this value by the fracture aperture to calculate the flow rate in m³/s. Is this approach correct?

You need to multiply the discharge by the width of the zone (perpendicular to the vector) to get a volumetric flow rate. The safest way to determine the volumetric flow rate is to sum the knot unbalanced volumes along an edge (or joint boundary).

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Thank you for the response. How does the joint aperture influence the calculation of unbalanced volumes at knots? I did not define this property explicitly in my FISH function, I simply summed all knot unbalanced volumes along the joint boundary.

Yes, the aperture is accounted for in the knot volume. Have a look at this example to calculate inflow and outflow

flow_only.dat (1.3 KB)