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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs
Published on: July 2, 2020
Experimental evidence of flow destabilization in a two-dimensional bidisperse foam
I Cantat1, C Poloni, R Delannay
1GMCM, UMR 6626, Université de Rennes (CNRS), 263 av. du Général Leclerc, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France. isabelle.cantat@univ-rennes1.fr
Abstract:
Liquid foam flows in a Hele-Shaw cell were investigated. The plug flow obtained for a monodisperse foam is strongly perturbed in the presence of bubbles whose sizes are larger than the average bubble size by an order of magnitude, at least. Above a velocity threshold, the large bubbles migrate faster than the mean flow. We evidence experimentally this instability and, in the case of a single large bubble, we compare the large bubble velocity to the prediction deduced from scaling arguments. In the case of a bidisperse foam, an attractive interaction between large bubbles induces segregation and the large bubbles organize themselves in columns oriented along the flow.
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