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Disorder-induced capillary bursts control intermittency in slow imbibition
Xavier Clotet1, Jordi Ortín2, Stéphane Santucci3
1Departament ECM, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Laboratoire de Physique, CNRS UMR 5672, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France.
Physical Review Letters
|August 30, 2014
Summary
The study reveals that imbibition front dynamics are intermittent, driven by capillary bursts. The front
Area of Science:
- Physics
- Fluid Dynamics
- Multiscale Analysis
Background:
- Imbibition front dynamics are crucial in porous media flow.
- Understanding front intermittency requires multiscale analysis.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the spatially averaged velocity of an imbibition front.
- To investigate the intermittent dynamics of slow front propagation.
Main Methods:
- Multiscale analysis of imbibition front velocity V_{ℓ}(t) at different scales ℓ.
- Analysis of velocity distributions ΔV_{ℓ}(τ) over time scales τ.
Main Results:
- Front dynamics exhibit intermittency, transitioning from heavy-tailed to Gaussian distributions.
- A critical time lag τ_{c}, determined by medium heterogeneities, marks this transition.
- Capillary bursts at small scales, up to ℓ_{c} where viscous dissipation dominates, cause intermittency.
Conclusions:
- The effective number of degrees of freedom (ℓ/ℓ_{c}) governs the intensity of front intermittency.
- Intermittency is a key characteristic of slow imbibition front dynamics in heterogeneous media.
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