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Updated: Mar 14, 2026

Impacts of Free-falling Spheres on a Deep Liquid Pool with Altered Fluid and Impactor Surface Conditions
Published on: February 17, 2019
Geometrical instability in the imbibition of a sphere
Alban Debacker1, Didier Lootens2, Pascal Hébraud3
1IPCMS/CNRS, 23 rue du Loess, 67034 Strasbourg, France. pascal.hebraud@ipcms.unistra.fr and Sika, Tüffenwies 16, CH-8048 Zürich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
We study the imbibition of a spherical porous aggregate. When the difference in pressure between the inside and the outside of the aggregate is large enough, the imbibition front becomes unstable. This instability leads to the acceleration of the imbibition process. In more complex geometries with non-constant curvatures, the imbibition becomes locally unstable in the regions with the highest curvatures, leading to spatially heterogeneous front velocities.
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