A new methodology for the simulation of salt cavity development by dissolution is presented, verified and qualitatively validated by experiments. Starting from an initial cavity, the simulator models the injection of fresh water, natural and forced convection of the brine, and the evolution of the cavity walls due to dissolution. The nonlinear model couples brine mass and momentum conservation (governed by incompressible Navier–Stokes equations) with the buoyancy effect due to the brine density variations. Vortex generation and density-driven brine plume rise demonstrate the impact of complex brine flow patterns on the dissolution front evolution. A new explicit interface tracking strategy is employed to investigate the dissolution front movement and an improved smoothing algorithm to enhance the model robustness, contributing to low computational cost and stable simulation for the long-term dissolution process simulation. The proposed model is verified by conducting spatial and temporal convergence studies and qualitatively validated using lab-scale experiments. The agreement between experiments and simulations of horizontal and vertical dissolution cases demonstrates the utility of the model. The simulation results indicate that the rising plume of brine results in a “morning glory” shape cavity under a vertical dissolution scenario and a significant difference between upper and lower fronts dissolution rates for the horizontal dissolution case. The coupling effect of eddy development and cavity shape evolution is also discussed. This work furthers the understanding of the interaction between brine transport in an initially-formed cavity and dissolution patterns of the cavity boundaries, driven by gravity and convective flows.

通过实验提出、验证和定性验证了一种通过溶解模拟盐腔发展的新方法。从初始空腔开始，模拟器模拟淡水的注入、盐水的自然和强制对流，以及由于溶解导致的空腔壁的演变。非线性模型将盐水质量和动量守恒（由不可压缩的 Navier-Stokes 方程控制）与盐水密度变化引起的浮力效应耦合在一起。涡流的产生和密度驱动的盐水羽流上升证明了复杂盐水流动模式对溶解前沿演化的影响。采用新的显式界面跟踪策略来研究溶解前沿运动，并采用改进的平滑算法来增强模型的稳健性，有助于长期溶解过程模拟的低计算成本和稳定模拟。所提出的模型通过进行空间和时间收敛研究进行验证，并使用实验室规模的实验进行定性验证。水平和垂直溶解情况的实验和模拟之间的一致性证明了该模型的实用性。模拟结果表明，在垂直溶解情况下，上升的卤水羽流会导致“牵牛花”形空腔，而在水平溶解情况下，上、下前沿溶解速率会有显着差异。还讨论了涡流发展和空腔形状演化的耦合效应。