H018-04
Fluid-fluid displacement in porous media: completing Lenormand’s phase diagram for arbitrary wettability.

Monday, 7 December 2020: 16:12
Virtual
Bauyrzhan Primkulov1, Amir A Pahlavan2, Xiaojing Fu3, Benzhong Zhao4, Christopher W MacMinn5 and Ruben Juanes1, (1)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, (2)Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States, (3)University of California Berkeley, Earth and Planetary Science, Berkeley, CA, United States, (4)McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, (5)University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Lenormand, Touboul, and Zarcone (JFM, 1988) suggested that the character of two-phase flow in porous media is controlled by two dimensionless numbers: capillary number (Ca) and viscosity ratio (M). Many experiments since then have conclusively shown that wettability of the porous medium plays an equally important role in determining the pore-scale displacement mechanisms and the macroscopic invading-fluid patterns. We pick up where Lenormand and co-workers left off. We complete Lenormand’s seminal diagram to incorporate arbitrary wettability of the porous medium, by means of a moving-capacitor network model (Primkulov et al., JFM 2019). We discuss the results in the context of pattern formation, pore-scale disorder, and efficiency of fluid-fluid displacement.

References:

Lenormand, R., Touboul, E. and Zarcone, C. (1988) Numerical models and experiments on immiscible displacements in porous media. Journal of Fluid Mechanics 189, 165–187.

Primkulov, B.K., Pahlavan, A.A., Fu, X., Zhao, B., MacMinn, C.W., and Juanes, R. (2019) Signatures of fluid-fluid displacement in porous media: Wettability, patterns, and pressures. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 875, R4.

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