The dynamics of the wetting front are considered during the imbibition of a fluid into a porous substrate through a circular drawing area. A mathematical model of this process, assuming incompressible Darcy flow, is presented, before the full finite element scheme for solving this set of equations is given allowing the reader to reproduce all presented results. Asymptotic analysis is performed revealing contradictions between the assumptions of Darcy's equation and the solutions it produces, along with qualitative results for the behaviour of the wetting front and macroscopic contact angles. Velocity and pressure distributions across the wetted region are presented, as well as plots of the evolution of the wetting front and parameters with discussion.
A new approach to the modelling of wetting fronts in porous media on the Darcy scale is developed, based on considering the types (modes) of motion the menisci go through on the pore scale. This approach is illustrated using a simple model case of imbibition of a viscous incompressible liquid into an isotropic porous matrix with two modes of motion for the menisci, the wetting mode and the threshold mode. The latter makes it necessary to introduce an essentially new technique of conjugate problems that allows one to link threshold phenomena on the pore scale with the motion on the Darcy scale.…
The spreading of an incompressible viscous liquid over an isotropic homogeneous unsaturated porous substrate is considered. It is shown that, unlike the dynamic wetting of an impermeable solid substrate, where the dynamic contact angle has to be specified as a boundary condition in terms of the wetting velocity and other flow characteristics, the `effective' dynamic contact angle on an unsaturated porous substrate is completely determined by the requirement of existence of a solution, i.e. the absence of a nonintegrable singularity in the spreading fluid's pressure at the `effective' contact l…
A fundamental variable characterizing immiscible two-phase flow in porous media is the wetting saturation, which is the ratio between the pore volume filled with wetting fluid and the total pore volume. More generally, this variable comes from a specific choice of coordinates on some underlying space, the domain of variables that can be used to express the volumetric flow rate. The underlying mathematical structure allows for the introduction of other variables containing the same information, but which are more convenient from a theoretical point of view. We introduce along these lines polar …
A mathematical model is developed that captures the transport of liquid water in hardened concrete, as well as the chemical reactions that occur between the imbibed water and the residual calcium silicate compounds residing in the porous concrete matrix. The main hypothesis in this model is that the reaction product -- calcium silicate hydrate gel -- clogs the pores within the concrete thereby hindering water transport. Numerical simulations are employed to determine the sensitivity of the model solution to changes in various physical parameters, and compare to experimental results available i…
We study the asymptotic behaviour of sharp front solutions arising from the nonlinear diffusion equation θ_t = (D(θ)θ_x)_x, where the diffusivity is an exponential function D(θ) = D_o exp(βθ). This problem arises for example in the study of unsaturated flow in porous media where θ represents the liquid saturation. For physical parameters corresponding to actual porous media, the diffusivity at the residual saturation is D(0) = D_o << 1 so that the diffusion problem is nearly degenerate. Such problems are characterised by wetting fronts that sharply delineate regions of saturated and unsaturate…
Wetting phenomena play a key role in flows through porous media. Relative permeability and capillary pressure-saturation functions show a high sensitivity to wettability, which has different definitions at the continuum- and pore-scale. At the continuum-scale, the state of wetting is defined as Amott-Harvey or USBM (United States Bureau of Mines) by capillary pressure drainage and imbibition cycles. At the pore-scale, the concept of contact angle is used, which until recently was not experimentally possible to determine within an opaque porous medium. Recent progress on measurements of pore-sc…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the formation and complex morphologies of trapped non-wetting fluid ganglia within a model 3D porous medium. The wetting fluid continues to flow around the ganglia after they form; this flow is characterized by a capillary number, Ca. We find that the ganglia configurations do not vary for small Ca; by contrast, as Ca is increased above a threshold value, the largest ganglia start to become mobilized and are ultimately removed from the medium. By combining our 3D visualization with measurements of the bulk transport, we show that this behavior c…
Pressure controlled displacement of an oil/water interface is studied in dense packings of functionalized glass beads with well-defined spatial wettability correlations. An enhanced dissipation is observed if the typical extension $ξ$ of the same-type wetting domains is smaller than the average bead diameter $d$. Three dimensional imaging using X-ray microtomography shows that the frequency $n(s)$ of residual droplet volumes $s$ for different $ξ$ collapse onto the same curve. This indicates that the additional dissipation for small $ξ$ is due to contact line pinning rather than an increase of …
In the context of stochastic two-phase flow in porous media, we introduce a novel and efficient method to estimate the probability distribution of the wetting saturation field under uncertain rock properties in highly heterogeneous porous systems, where streamline patterns are dominated by permeability heterogeneity, and for slow displacement processes (viscosity ratio close to unity). Our method, referred to as the frozen streamline distribution method (FROST), is based on a physical understanding of the stochastic problem. Indeed, we identify key random fields that guide the wetting saturati…
We describe the imbibition process from a point source into a homogeneous semi-infinite porous material. When body forces are negligible, the advance of the wetting front is driven by capillary pressure and resisted by viscous forces. With the assumption that the wetting front assumes a hemispherical shape, our analytical results show that the absorbed volume flow rate is approximately constant with respect to time, and that the radius of the wetting evolves in time as r \approx t^(1/3). This cube-root law for the long-time dynamics is confirmed by experiments using a packed cell of glass micr…
Various biological and chemical processes lead to the nucleation and growth of non-wetting fluid bubbles within the pore space of a granular medium, such as the formation of gas bubbles in liquid-saturated lake-bed sediments. In sufficiently soft porous materials, the non-wetting nature of these bubbles can result in the formation of open cavities within the granular solid skeleton. Here, we consider this process through the lens of phase separation, where thermomechanics govern the separation of the non-wetting phase from a fluid-fluid-solid mixture. We construct a phase-field model informed …
We report an approach to fully visualize the flow of two immiscible fluids through a model three-dimensional (3D) porous medium at pore-scale resolution. Using confocal microscopy, we directly image the drainage of the medium by the non-wetting oil and subsequent imbibition by the wetting fluid. During imbibition, the wetting fluid pinches off threads of oil in the narrow crevices of the medium, forming disconnected oil ganglia. Some of these ganglia remain trapped within the medium. By resolving the full 3D structure of the trapped ganglia, we show that the typical ganglion size, and the tota…
We present an experimental and numerical study of immiscible two-phase flow in 3-dimensional (3D) porous media to find the relationship between the volumetric flow rate ($Q$) and the total pressure difference ($ΔP$) in the steady state. We show that in the regime where capillary forces compete with the viscous forces, the distribution of capillary barriers at the interfaces effectively creates a yield threshold, making the fluids reminiscent of a Bingham viscoplastic fluid in the porous medium, introducing a threshold pressure $P_t$. In this regime, $Q$ depends quadratically on an excess press…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the simultaneous flow of both a wetting and a non-wetting fluid through a model three-dimensional (3D) porous medium. We find that, for small flow rates, both fluids flow through unchanging, distinct, connected 3D pathways; in stark contrast, at sufficiently large flow rates, the non-wetting fluid is broken up into discrete ganglia. By performing experiments over a range of flow rates, using fluids of different viscosities, and with porous media having different geometries, we show that this transition can be characterized by a state diagram tha…
The anomalous dynamics of capillary rise in a porous medium discovered experimentally more than a decade ago (Delker et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76 (1996) 2902) is described. The developed theory is based on considering the principal modes of motion of the menisci that collectively form the wetting front on the Darcy scale. These modes, which include (i) dynamic wetting mode, (ii) threshold mode and (iii) interface de-pinning process, are incorporated into the boundary conditions for the bulk equations formulated in the regular framework of continuum mechanics of porous media, thus allowing one t…
We show that when a non-wetting fluid drains a stratified porous medium at sufficiently small capillary numbers Ca, it flows only through the coarsest stratum of the medium; by contrast, above a threshold Ca, the non-wetting fluid is also forced laterally, into part of the adjacent, finer strata. The spatial extent of this partial invasion increases with Ca. We quantitatively understand this behavior by balancing the stratum-scale viscous pressure driving the flow with the capillary pressure required to invade individual pores. Because geological formations are frequently stratified, we antici…
The change in contact angles due to the injection of low salinity water or any other wettability altering agent in an oil-rich porous medium is modeled by a network model of disordered pores transporting two immiscible fluids. We introduce a dynamic wettability altering mechanism, where the time dependent wetting property of each pore is determined by the cumulative flow of water through it. Simulations are performed to reach steady-state for different possible alterations in the wetting angle ($θ$). We find that deviation from oil-wet conditions re-mobilizes the stuck clusters and increases t…
Imbibition plays a central role in diverse energy, environmental, and industrial processes. In many cases, the medium has multiple parallel strata of different permeabilities; however, how this stratification impacts imbibition is poorly understood. We address this gap in knowledge by directly visualizing forced imbibition in three-dimensional (3D) porous media with two parallel strata. We find that imbibition is spatially heterogeneous: for small capillary number Ca, the wetting fluid preferentially invades the fine stratum, while for Ca above a threshold value, the fluid instead preferential…
The maximum speed at which a liquid can wet a solid is limited by the need to displace gas lubrication films in front of the moving contact line. The characteristic height of these films is often comparable to the mean free path in the gas so that hydrodynamic models do not adequately describe the flow physics. This Letter develops a model which incorporates kinetic effects in the gas, via the Boltzmann equation, and can predict experimentally-observed increases in the maximum speed of wetting when (a) the liquid's viscosity is varied, (b) the ambient gas pressure is reduced or (c) the meniscu…
We analyze spreading of a density front in the Küntz-Lavallée model of porous media. In contrast to previous studies, where unusual properties of the front were attributed to anomalous diffusion, we find that the front evolution is controlled by normal diffusion and hydrodynamic flow, the latter being responsible for apparent enhancement of the front propagation speed. Our finding suggests that results of several recent experiments on porous media, where anomalous diffusion was reported based on the density front propagation analysis, should be reconsidered to verify the role of a fluid flow.
Immiscible two-phase flow in porous media with mixed wet conditions was examined using a capillary fiber bundle model, which is analytically solvable, and a dynamic pore network model. The mixed wettability was implemented in the models by allowing each tube or link to have a different wetting angle chosen randomly from a given distribution. Both models showed that mixed wettability can have significant influence on the rheology in terms of the dependence of the global volumetric flow rate on the global pressure drop. In the capillary fiber bundle model, for small pressure drops when only a sm…
Imbibition, the displacement of a nonwetting fluid by a wetting fluid, plays a central role in diverse energy, environmental, and industrial processes. While this process is typically studied in homogeneous porous media with uniform permeabilities, in many cases, the media have multiple parallel strata of different permeabilities. How such stratification impacts the fluid dynamics of imbibition, as well as the fluid saturation after the wetting fluid breaks through to the end of a given medium, is poorly understood. We address this gap in knowledge by developing an analytical model of imbibiti…
We analyze experimentally chemical waves propagation in the disordered flow field of a porous medium. The reaction fronts travel at a constant velocity which drastically depends on the mean flow direction and rate. The fronts may propagate either downstream and upstream but, surprisingly, they remain static over a range of flow rate values. Resulting from the competition between the chemical reaction and the disordered flow field, these frozen fronts display a particular sawtooth shape. The frozen regime is likely to be associated with front pinning in low velocity zones, the number of which v…
Flood front is the jump interface where fluids distribute discontinuously, whose interface condition is the theoretical basis of a mathematical model of the multiphase flow in porous medium. The conventional interface condition at the jump interface is expressed as the continuous Darcy velocity and fluid pressure (named CVCM ). Our study has inspected this conclusions. First, it is revealed that the principle of mass conservation has no direct relation to the velocity conservation, and the former is not the true foundation of the later, because the former only reflects the kinetic characterist…
Liquids in oil-bearing porous media assume complex shapes that depend on the reservoir characteristics and the wetting properties of the liquid. The wide variation in the geometry of rock formations makes it difficult to accurately predict the capillary pressure of small volumes of liquid and hence the likelihood of being able to move it. Here we consider the situation in which a small volume of liquid surrounds an upright cylinder on a flat substrate and predict the shape that the liquid takes and its capillary pressure. We validate our predictions by comparing with Surface Evolver simulation…
Flood front is the jump interface where fluids distribute discontinuously, whose interface condition is the theoretical basis of a mathematical model of the multiphase flow in porous medium. The conventional interface condition at the jump interface is expressed as the continuous Darcy velocity and fluid pressure (named CPVCM). This paper has inspected it via the studying the water-oil displacement in one dimensional reservoir with considering capillary pressure but ignoring the compressibility and gravity. It is proved theoretically that the total Darcy velocity and total pressure (defined by…
Porous asphalt (PA) is an open-graded porous material with a porosity of 20%, allowing fast drainage of rain and improving driving and acoustic conditions. However, the high porosity leads to significant contact with water resulting in a shorter life expectancy. To improve the durability and performance of PA, the distribution of water and its residence time have to be understood which entails capturing diverse multiphase phenomena. For these reasons, a numerical study is performed to analyze in detail the fluid transport mechanisms at play in PA, towards estimating the liquid distribution ins…
Capillary fingering is a displacement process that can occur when a non-wetting fluid displaces a wetting fluid from a homogeneous disordered porous medium. Here, we investigate how this process is influenced by a pore size gradient. Using microfluidic experiments and computational pore-network models, we show that the non-wetting fluid displacement behavior depends sensitively on the direction and the magnitude of the gradient. The fluid displacement depends on the competition between a pore size gradient and pore-scale disorder; indeed, a sufficiently large gradient can completely suppress c…
In this paper we consider a multiscale phase-field model for capillarity-driven flows in porous media. The presented model constitutes a reduction of the conventional Navier-Stokes-Cahn-Hilliard phase-field model, valid in situations where interest is restricted to dynamical and equilibrium behavior in an aggregated sense, rather than a precise description of microscale flow phenomena. The model is based on averaging of the equation of motion, thereby yielding a significant reduction in the complexity of the underlying Navier-Stokes-Cahn-Hilliard equations, while retaining its macroscopic dyna…
Transported chemical reactions in unsaturated porous media are relevant across a range of environmental and industrial applications. Continuum scale dispersive models are often based on equivalent parameters derived from analogy with saturated conditions, and cannot appropriately account for processes such as incomplete mixing. It is also unclear how the third dimension controls mixing and reactions in unsaturated conditions. We obtain 3$D$ experimental images of the phases distribution and of transported chemical reaction by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) using an immiscible non-wetting liq…
Drainage, in which a nonwetting fluid displaces a wetting fluid from a porous medium, is well-studied for media with unchanging solid surfaces. However, many media can be eroded by drainage, with eroded material redeposited in pores downstream, altering further flow. Here, we use theory and simulation to examine how these coupled processes both alter the overall fluid displacement pathway and help reshape the solid medium. We find two new drainage behaviors with markedly different characteristics, and quantitatively delineate the conditions under which they arise. Our results thereby help expa…
We examine the transport in a homogeneous porous medium of a finite slice of a solute which adsorbs on the porous matrix following a Langmuir adsorption isotherm and can influence the dynamic viscosity of the solution. In the absence of any viscosity variation, the Langmuir adsorption induces the formation of a shock layer wave at the frontal interface and of a rarefaction wave at the rear interface of the sample. For a finite width sample, these waves interact after a given time that varies nonlinearly with the adsorption properties to give a triangle-like concentration profile in which the m…
We investigate the stabilization mechanisms of the invasion front in two-dimensional drainage displacement in porous media by using a network simulator. We focus on the process when the front stabilizes due to the viscous forces in the liquids. We find that the capillary pressure difference between two different points along the front varies almost linearly as function of height separation in the direction of the displacement. The numerical results support arguments that differ from those suggested earlier for viscous stabilization. Our arguments are based upon the observation that nonwetting …
Drops deposited on rough and hydrophobic surfaces can stay suspended with gas pockets underneath the liquid, then showing very low hydrodynamic resistance. When this superhydrophobic state breaks down, the subsequent wetting process can show different dynamical properties. A suitable choice of the geometry can make the wetting front propagate in a stepwise manner leading to {\it square-shaped} wetted area: the front propagation is slow and the patterned surface fills by rows through a {\it zipping} mechanism. The multiple time scale scenario of this wetting process is experimentally characteri…
We present a systematic, quantitative assessment of the impact of pore size disorder and its interplay with flow rates and wettability on immiscible displacement of a viscous fluid. Pore-scale simulations and micromodel experiments show that reducing disorder increases the displacement efficiency and compactness, minimizing the fluid-fluid interfacial area, through (i) trapping at low rates and (ii) viscous fingering at high rates. Increasing the wetting angle suppresses both trapping and fingering, hence reducing the sensitivity of the displacement to the underlying disorder. A modified capil…
We present a theoretical and experimental investigation of drainage in porous media. The study is limited to stabilized fluid fronts at moderate injection rates, but it takes into account capillary, viscous, and gravitational forces. In this theory the work applied on the system, the energy dissipation, the final saturation and the width of the stabilized fluid front can all be calculated if we know the dimensionless fluctuation number, the wetting properties, the surface tension between the fluids, the fractal dimensions of the invasion front and the invading structure, and the exponent descr…
Immiscible fluid displacement in porous media is fundamental for many environmental processes, including infiltration of water in soils, groundwater remediation, enhanced recovery of hydrocarbons and carbon geosequestration. Microstructural heterogeneity, in particular of particle sizes, can significantly impact immiscible displacement. For instance, it may lead to unstable flow and preferential displacement patterns. We present a systematic, quantitative pore-scale study of the impact of spatial correlations in particle sizes on the drainage of a partially-wetting fluid. We perform pore-netwo…
Recent experiments on coating flows and liquid drop impact both demonstrate that wetting failures caused by air entrainment can be suppressed by reducing the ambient gas pressure. Here, it is shown that non-equilibrium effects in the gas can account for this behaviour, with ambient pressure reductions increasing the gas' mean free path and hence the Knudsen number $Kn$. These effects first manifest themselves through Maxwell slip at the gas' boundaries so that for sufficiently small $Kn$ they can be incorporated into a continuum model for dynamic wetting flows. The resulting mathematical model…
We study the impact of the wetting properties on the immiscible displacement of a viscous fluid in disordered porous media. We present a novel pore-scale model that captures wettability and dynamic effects, including the spatiotemporal nonlocality associated with interface readjustments. Our simulations show that increasing the wettability of the invading fluid (the contact angle) promotes cooperative pore filling that stabilizes the invasion, and that this effect is suppressed as the flow rate increases, due to viscous instabilities. We use scaling analysis to derive two dimensionless numbers…
Immiscible fluid displacement in porous media occurs in several natural and industrial processes. For example, during petroleum extraction from porous rock reservoirs, water is used to displace oil. In this paper, we investigate primary drainage and imbibition in a heterogeneous porous medium using an improved numerical model based on the multicomponent pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann method. We apply recent developments from the literature and develop new pressure boundary conditions. We show that the proposed model is able to simulate realistic viscosity ratios, and it allows independent t…
We report and discuss, by means of pore-scale numerical simulations, the possibility of achieving a directional-dependent two-phase flow behaviour during the process of invasion of a viscous fluid into anisotropic porous media with controlled design. By customising the pore-scale morphology and heterogeneities with the adoption of anisotropic triangular pillars distributed with quenched disorder, we observe a substantially different invasion dynamics according to the direction of fluid injection relative to the medium orientation, that is depending if the triangular pillars have their apex ori…
The propagation of nonlinear waves in one dimensional space, unsteady and compressible flow in Darcy-type porous media is analyzed. It is assumed that the weak discontinuity propagate long the characteristic path using the characteristics of the governing quasilinear system as the reference coordinate system. Evolution equation in the characteristic plane is derived. As an application of the theory the breaking point at the wave front is determined. It is assessed as to how the porosity of the medium affects the process of steepening and flattering of acceleration waves with planar, cylindrica…
We present pore-scale simulations of two-phase flows in a reconstructed fibrous porous layer. The three dimensional microstructure of the material, a fuel cell gas diffusion layer, is acquired via X-ray computed tomography and used as input for lattice Boltzmann simulations. We perform a quantitative analysis of the multiphase pore-scale dynamics and we identify the dominant fluid structures governing mass transport. The results show the existence of three different regimes of transport: a fast inertial dynamics at short times, characterised by a compact uniform front, a viscous-capillary regi…
Consider the thin-film equation $h_t + \left(h h_{yyy}\right)_y = 0$ with a zero contact angle at the free boundary, that is, at the triple junction where liquid, gas, and solid meet. Previous results on stability and well-posedness of this equation have focused on perturbations of equilibrium-stationary or self-similar profiles, the latter eventually wetting the whole surface. These solutions have their counterparts for the second-order porous-medium equation $h_t - (h^m)_{yy} = 0$, where $m > 1$ is a free parameter. Both porous-medium and thin-film equation degenerate as $h \searrow 0$, but …
We investigate the formation of fingered flow in dry granular media under simulated rainfall using a quasi-2D experimental set-up composed of a random close packing of mono-disperse glass beads. Using controlled experiments, we analyze the finger instabilities that develop from the wetting front as a function of fundamental granular (particle size) and fluid properties (rainfall, viscosity).These finger instabilities act as precursors for water channels, which serve as outlets for water drainage. We look into the characteristics of the homogeneous wetting front and channel size as well as esti…
The migration of liquids in porous media, such as sand, has been commonly considered at high saturation levels with liquid pathways at pore dimensions. In this letter we reveal a low saturation regime observed in our experiments with droplets of extremely low volatility liquids deposited on sand. In this regime the liquid is mostly found within the grain surface roughness and in the capillary bridges formed at the contacts between the grains. The bridges act as variable-volume reservoirs and the flow is driven by the capillary pressure arising at the wetting front according to the roughness le…
We present a theoretical and experimental investigation of slow drainage in porous media with a gradient in the grains size (and hence in the typical pores' throats), in an external gravitational field. We mathematically show that such structural gradient and external force have a similar effect on the obtained drainage patterns, when they stabilise the invasion front. With the help of a newly introduced experimental set-up, based on the 3D-print of transparent porous matrices, we illustrate this equivalence, and extend it to the case where the front is unstable. We also present some invasion-…
A stochastic approach to the filling dynamics of an open topology porous structure permeated with a perfectly wetting fluid is presented. From the discrete structure of the disordered voids network with only nearest neighbors links, we derive the "microscopic" (at the pores scale) dynamical equations governing the filling dynamics of the coupled pores and the fluid pressure dynamics. The model yields two fundamental consequences. The first consequence regards the emergence of Darcy's law and the dependence of the predicted permeability with the voids network topology. The second one is the pre…
