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Updated: May 14, 2026

Analyzing Mixing Inhomogeneity in a Microfluidic Device by Microscale Schlieren Technique
Published on: June 12, 2015
Scaling of convective mixing in porous media
Juan J Hidalgo1, Jaime Fe, Luis Cueto-Felgueroso
1Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 48, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. juanes@mit.edu
Abstract:
Convective mixing in porous media is triggered by a Rayleigh-Bénard-type hydrodynamic instability as a result of an unstable density stratification of fluids. While convective mixing has been studied extensively, the fundamental behavior of the dissolution flux and its dependence on the system parameters are not yet well understood. Here, we show that the dissolution flux and the rate of fluid mixing are determined by the mean scalar dissipation rate. We use this theoretical result to provide computational evidence that the classical model of convective mixing in porous media exhibits, in the regime of high Rayleigh number, a dissolution flux that is constant and independent of the Rayleigh number. Our findings support the universal character of convective mixing and point to the need for alternative explanations for nonlinear scalings of the dissolution flux with the Rayleigh number, recently observed experimentally.
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