Viscous fingering patterns form in confined geometries at the interface between two fluids as the lower-viscosity fluid displaces the one with higher viscosity. Previous studies have examined the most unstable wavelength of the patterns that form using both linear-stability analysis and the dynamics of finger growth in the nonlinear regime. Interesting differences in dynamics have been seen between rectilinear and radial geometries as well as between fluid pairs that are immiscible (with interfacial tension) or miscible (with negligible interfacial tension). This paper reports measurements of how all of these systems transition from the linearly unstable regime to their late time, nonlinear dynamics. In all four cases there is a region of stable or slow growth characterized by an onset length scale before fingers enter the late-time regime. For immiscible fluids in a rectilinear geometry this onset length is consistent with linear-stability analyses. All other cases are not adequately described by existing theory. In radial geometries, the onset length predicted from theory is an order of magnitude smaller than what is experimentally observed and has the incorrect scaling with dimensionless numbers. For miscible fluids in a rectilinear geometry the onset length is related to the development of steady-state structures within the confining dimension and cannot be explained by quasi-two dimensional theories. By combining the onset length with the finger growth rate measured after onset, the global patterns that form well into the late-time dynamics can be predicted.
We investigate the viscous fingering instability that arises when air is injected from the end of an oil-filled, compliant channel. We show that induced axial and transverse depth gradients foster novel pattern formation. Moreover, the steady propagation of the interface allows us to elucidate the nonlinear saturation of a fingering pattern first observed in a time-evolving system (Pihler-Puzovic et al. PRL 108, 074502, 2012): the wavelength is set by the viscous fingering mechanism, but the amplitude is inversely proportional to the tangent of the compliant wall's inclination angle.
Viscous fingering is a well-known hydrodynamic instability that sets in when a less viscous fluid displaces a more viscous fluid. When the two fluids are miscible, viscous fingering introduces disorder in the velocity field and exerts a fundamental control on the rate at which the fluids mix. We present a fluid dynamics video of the mixing process in a viscously unstable flow, generated from a high-resolution numerical simulation using a computational strategy that is stable for arbitrary viscosity ratios. We develop a two-equation dynamic model of concentration variance and mean dissipation r…
We present a study of viscous fingering using the Volume Of Fluid method and a central injection geometry, assuming a Laplacian field and a simple surface tension law. As in experiments we see branched structures resulting from the Saffman-Taylor instability. We find that the area $A$ of a viscous-fingering cluster varies as a simple power law $A \sim L^α$ of its interface length $L$. Our results are compared to previously published simulations in which the viscosity of the invading fluid is vanishing. We find differences in exponent $α$ and in the appearance of detached droplets and bubbles.
When a more mobile fluid displaces another immiscible one in a porous medium, viscous fingering propagates with a partial sweep, which hinders oil recovery and soil remedy. We experimentally investigate the feasibility of tuning such fingering propagation in a non-uniform narrow passage with a radial injection, which is widely used in various applications. We show that a radially converging cell can suppress the common viscous fingering observed in a uniform passage, and a full sweep of the displaced fluid is then achieved. The injection flow rate, $Q$, can be further exploited to manipulate t…
The process of one fluid pushing another is universally common while involving complex interfacial instabilities. Particularly, occurring in a myriad of natural and industrial processes, wavy fingering patterns frequently emerge when a less viscous fluid pushes another more viscous one, such as water invading oil, in a porous medium. Such finger-shaped interfaces producing partial displacement significantly affect the efficiency of numerous applications, for example, chromatography, printing devices, coating flows, oil-well cementing, as well as large-scale technologies of groundwater and enha…
The hydrodynamic viscous fingering instability can be influenced by a simple viscosity changing chemical reaction of type A+B --> C, when a solution of reactant A is injected into a solution of B and a product C of different viscosity is formed. We investigate here numerically such reactive viscous fingering in the case of a reaction decreasing the viscosity to define the optimal conditions on the chemical and hydrodynamic parameters for controlling fingering. In particular, we analyze the influence of the injection flow rate or equivalently of the Peclet number (Pe) of the problem on the effi…
A rest fluid displaced by a less viscous fluid in a porous medium triggers the so-called Saffman-Taylor instability at their contact front and hence forms complicated finger-like patterns. When the two fluids are miscible, the surface tension at their contact front vanishes, leaving the variation in viscosity dominant the contribution to the instability. The phenomena, named viscous fingering, can be studied by the analogy of a single-phase flow in the Hele-Shaw cell, a quasi-two-dimensional rectilinear plane. Viscous fingering produces complex geometrical patterns. They are important not only…
We reconsider the radial Saffman-Taylor instability, when a fluid injected from a point source displaces another fluid with a higher viscosity in a Hele-Shaw cell, where the fluids are confined between two neighboring flat plates. The advancing fluid front is unstable and forms fingers along the circumference. The so-called Brinkman equations is used to describe the flow field, which also takes into account viscous stresses in the plane and not only viscous stresses due to the confining plates like the Darcy equation. The dispersion relation agrees better with the experimental results than the…
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 stability of radial viscous fingering (VF) in miscible fluids. We show that the instability is decided by an interplay between advection and diffusion during initial stages of flow. Using linear stability analysis and nonlinear simulations, we demonstrate that this competition is a function of the radius $r_0$ of the circular region initially occupied by the less viscous fluid in the porous medium. For each $r_0$, we further determine the stability in terms of Péclet number ($Pe$) and log-mobility ratio ($M$). The $Pe-M$ parameter space is divided into stable and unstable zo…
A variational approach has been recently employed to determine the ideal time-dependent injection rate Q(t) that minimizes fingering formation when a fluid is injected in a Hele-Shaw cell filled with another fluid of much greater viscosity. However, such a calculation is approximate in nature, since it has been performed by assuming a high capillary number regime. In this work, we go one step further, and utilize a Hamiltonian formulation to obtain an analytical exact solution for Q(t), now valid for arbitrary values of the capillary number. Moreover, this Hamiltonian scheme is applied to calc…
Viscous fingering patterns can form at the interface between two immiscible fluids confined in the gap between a pair of flat plates; whenever the fluid with lower viscosity displaces the one of higher viscosity the interface is unstable. For miscible fluids the situation is more complicated due to the formation of interfacial structure in the thin dimension spanning the gap. Here we study the effect of the inherent diffusion between the two miscible fluids on this structure and on the viscous fingering patterns that emerge. We discover an unexpected transition separating two distinct regimes …
Viscous and gravitational fingering refer to flow instabilities in porous media that are triggered by adverse mobility or density ratios, respectively. These instabilities have been studied extensively in the past for 1) single-phase flow (e.g., contaminant transport in groundwater, first-contact-miscible displacement of oil by gas in hydrocarbon production), and 2) multi-phase immiscible and incompressible flow (e.g., water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection in oil reservoirs). Fingering in multiphase compositional and compressible flow has received much less attention, perhaps due to its high c…
The number of splashed fingers generated by a solid projectile's impact onto a viscous liquid layer is experimentally studied. A steel sphere is dropped onto a viscous liquid pool. Then, a fingering instability occurs around the crater's rim, depending on the experimental conditions such as projectile's inertia and the viscosity of the target liquid. When the impact inertia is not sufficient, any fingering structure cannot be observed. Contrastively, if the impact inertia is too much, the random splashing is induced and the counting of fingers becomes difficult. The clear fingering instability…
Viscous fingering and wormhole growth are complex nonlinear unstable phenomena. We view both as the result of competition for water in which the capacity of an instability to grow depends on its ability to carry water. We derive empirical solutions to quantify the finger/wormhole flow rate in single-, two-, and multiple-finger systems. We use these solutions to show that fingering and wormhole patterns are a deterministic result of competition. For wormhole growth, controlled by dissolution, we solve re-active transport analytically within each wormhole to compute dissolution at the wormhole w…
A non-modal linear stability analysis (NMA) of the miscible viscous fingering in a porous medium is studied for a toy model of non-monotonic viscosity variation. The onset of instability and its physical mechanism are captured in terms of the singular values of the propagator matrix corresponding to the non-autonomous linear equations. We discuss two types of non-monotonic viscosity profiles, namely, with unfavorable (when a less viscous fluid displaces a high viscous fluid) and with favorable (when a more viscous fluid displaces a less viscous fluid) end-point viscosities. A linear stability …
The results from a series of well characterised, unstable, miscible displacement experiments in a Hele Shaw cell with a quarter five-spot source-sink geometry are presented, with comparisons to detailed numerical simulation. We perform repeated experiments at adverse viscosity ratios from 1 - 20 and Peclet numbers from 10$^4$ - 10$^6$ capturing the transition from 2D to 3D radial fingering and experimental uncertainty. The open-access dataset provides time-lapse images of the fingering patterns, transient effluent profiles, and meta-information for use in model validation. We find the complexi…
An improved wetting boundary implementation strategy is proposed based on lattice Boltzmann color-gradient model in this paper. In this strategy, an extra interface force condition is demonstrated based on the diffuse interface assumption and is employed in contact line region. It has been validated by three benchmark problems: static droplet wetting on a flat surface and a curved surface, and dynamic capillary filling. Good performances are shown in all three cases. Relied on the strict validation to our scheme, the viscous fingering phenomenon of immiscible fluids displacement in a two-dimen…
Time-dependent injection strategies are commonly employed to control the number of viscous fingers emerging at the interface separating two fluids during radial displacement in Hele-Shaw flows. Here we demonstrate theoretically that such a usual controlling method is significantly improved by taking advantage of an electro-osmotic flow generated by applying an external electric field. More specifically, under the coupled action of time-varying electric currents and injection rates, we design a strategy capable of controlling not only the number of fingers emerging at the interface but also whe…
Being a major limiting factor for the efficiency of various technologies, such as Enhanced Oil Recovery, the viscous fingering (or Saffman--Taylor) instability has been extensively studied, especially for simple Newtonian fluids. Here, we experimentally and theoretically demonstrate a vital control of inhibiting the viscous fingering instability for complex (yield-stress) fluids to generate a complete sweep with a flat interface. Using a rectangular tapered cell, we first experimentally show the feasibility of controlling the primary fingering instability of a complex yield-stress fluid when p…
We consider the axisymmetric displacement of an ambient fluid by a second input fluid of lower density and lower viscosity in a horizontal porous layer. If the two fluids have been vertically segregated by buoyancy, the flow becomes self-similar with the input fluid preferentially flowing near the upper boundary. We show that this axisymmetric self-similar flow is stable to angular-dependent perturbations for any viscosity ratio. The Saffman-Taylor instability is suppressed due to the buoyancy segregation of the fluids. The radial extent of the segregated current is inversely proportional to t…
The non-modal linear stability of miscible viscous fingering in a two dimensional homogeneous porous medium has been investigated. The linearized perturbed equations for Darcy's law coupled with a convection-diffusion equation is discretized using finite difference method. The resultant initial value problem is solved by fourth order Runge-Kutta method, followed by a singular value decomposition of the propagator matrix. Particular attention is given to the transient behavior rather than the long-time behavior of eigenmodes predicted by the traditional modal analysis. The transient behaviors o…
Numerical simulations and universal saturation profiles for viscous fingering patterns in Hele-Shaw flow
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco（伯南布哥联邦大学物理系）；Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学地球科学研究学院）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology（昆士兰科技大学理学院）
We perform linear stability analyses (LSA) and direct numerical simulations (DNS) to investigate the influence of the dynamic viscosity on viscous fingering (VF) instability in miscible slices. Selecting the characteristic scales appropriately the importance of the magnitude of the dynamic viscosity of individual fluids on VF in miscible slice has been shown in the context of the transient interfacial tension. Further, we have confirmed this result for immiscible fluids and manifest the similarities between VF in immiscible and miscible slices with transient interfacial tension. In a more gene…
Viscous fingering occurs in the flow of two immiscible, viscous fluids between the plates of a Hele-Shaw cell. Due to pressure gradients or gravity, the initially planar interface separating the two fluids undergoes a Saffman-Taylor instability and develops finger-like structures. When one of the fluids is a ferrofluid and a perpendicular magnetic field is applied, the labyrinthine instability supplements the usual viscous fingering instability, resulting in visually striking, complex patterns. We consider this problem in a rectangular flow geometry using a perturbative mode-coupling analysis.…
Traditional mathematical models of Hele--Shaw flow consider the injection (or withdrawal) of an air bubble into (or from) an infinite body of viscous fluid. The most commonly studied feature of such a model is how the Saffman-Taylor instability drives viscous fingering patterns at the fluid/air interface. Here we consider a more realistic model, which assumes the viscous fluid is finite, covering a doubly connected two-dimensional region bounded by two fluid/air interfaces. For the case in which the flow is driven by a pressure difference across the two interfaces, we explore this model numeri…
We present a theory of the interfacial stability of two immiscible electrolytes under the coupled action of pressure gradients and electric fields in a Hele-Shaw cell or porous medium. Mathematically, our theory describes a phenomenon of "Vector Laplacian Growth", in which the interface moves in response to the gradient of a vector-valued potential function through a generalized mobility tensor. Physically, we extend classical Saffman-Taylor problem to electrolytes by incorporating electrokinetic phenomena. A surprising prediction is that viscous fingering can be controlled by varying the inje…
We show that a minimal model for viscous fingering with a nematic liquid crystal in which anisotropy is considered to enter through two different viscosities in two perpendicular directions can be mapped to a two-fold anisotropy in the surface tension. We numerically integrate the dynamics of the resulting problem with the phase-field approach to find and characterize a transition between tip-splitting and side-branching as a function of both anisotropy and dimensionless surface tension. This anisotropy dependence could explain the experimentally observed (reentrant) transition as temperature …
We analyze a recent experiment of Sharon \textit{et al.} (2003) on the coarsening, due to surface tension, of fractal viscous fingering patterns (FVFPs) grown in a radial Hele-Shaw cell. We argue that an unforced Hele-Shaw model, a natural model for that experiment, belongs to the same universality class as model B of phase ordering. Two series of numerical simulations with model B are performed, with the FVFPs grown in the experiment, and with Diffusion Limited Aggregates, as the initial conditions. We observed Lifshitz-Slyozov scaling $t^{1/3}$ at intermediate distances and very slow converg…
Our experiments on viscous (Saffman-Taylor) fingering in Hele-Shaw channels reveal finger width fluctuations that were not observed in previous experiments, which had lower aspect ratios and higher capillary numbers Ca. These fluctuations intermittently narrow the finger from its expected width. The magnitude of these fluctuations is described by a power law, Ca^{-0.64}, which holds for all aspect ratios studied up to the onset of tip instabilities. Further, for large aspect ratios, the mean finger width exhibits a maximum as Ca is decreased instead of the predicted monotonic increase.
Viscous fingering (VF) is an interfacial instability that occurs in a narrow confinement or porous medium when a less-viscous fluid pushes a more viscous one, producing finger-like patterns. Controlling the VF instability is essential to enhance the efficiency of various technological applications. However, the control of VF instability has been challenging and so far focused on simple Newtonian fluids of constant viscosity. Here, we extend to complex yield-stress fluids and examine the controlling feasibility by carrying out a linear stability analysis using a radial cell with a converging ga…
When a liquid viscous bridge between two parallel substrates is stretched by accelerating one substrate, its interface recedes in the radial direction. In some cases the interface becomes unstable. Such instability leads to the emergence of a network of fingers. In this study the mechanisms of the fingering are studied experimentally and analysed theoretically. The experimental setup allows a constant acceleration of the movable substrate with up to 180 m/s$^2$. The phenomena are observed using two high-speed video systems. The number of fingers is measured for different liquid viscosities and…
Our experiments on viscous fingering of air into oil contained between closely spaced plates reveal two selection rules for the fjords of oil that separate fingers of air. (Fjords are the building blocks of solutions of the zero-surface-tension Laplacian growth equation.) Experiments in rectangular and circular geometries yield fjords with base widths 1/2 lambda_c, where lambda_c is the most unstable wavelength from a linear stability analysis. Further, fjords open at an angle of 8.0 degrees plus or minus 1.0 degree. These selection rules hold for a wide range of pumping rates and fjord length…
In this fluid dynamics video, we study a two-phase flow in an elastic Hele-Shaw cell that involves two distinct fluid- and solid-based instabilities: viscous fingering and sheet buckling. We show that the relative importance of the two instabilities is controlled by a single non-dimensional parameter, which provides a measure of the elasticity of the flexible wall. We employ numerical simulations to show that for relatively stiff [soft] walls, the system's behaviour is dominated by viscous fingering [sheet buckling]. Strong interactions between the two instabilities arise in an intermediate re…
The displacement of a more viscous fluid by a less viscous one in a quasi-two dimensional geometry leads to the formation of complex fingering patterns. This fingering has been characterized by a most unstable wavelength, $λ_c$, which depends on the viscosity difference between the two immiscible fluids and sets the characteristic width of the fingers. How the finger length grows after the instability occurs is an equally important, but previously overlooked, aspect that characterizes the global features of the patterns. As the lower viscosity fluid is injected, we show that there is a stable …
Using air to displace a viscous fluid contained in Hele-Shaw cell can create a fingering pattern at the interface between the fluids, if the capillary number exceeds a critical value. This Saffman-Taylor instability is revisited for the inverse case of a viscous fluid displacing air, when partially wettable hydrophilic particles are lying on the walls. Though the inverse case is otherwise stable, the presence of the particles results in a fingering instability at low capillary number. This capillary-driven instability is driven-by the integration of particles into the interface which results f…
We report analytical results for the development of the viscous fingering instability in a cylindrical Hele-Shaw cell of radius a and thickness b. We derive a generalized version of Darcy's law in such cylindrical background, and find it recovers the usual Darcy's law for flow in flat, rectangular cells, with corrections of higher order in b/a. We focus our interest on the influence of cell's radius of curvature on the instability characteristics. Linear and slightly nonlinear flow regimes are studied through a mode-coupling analysis. Our analytical results reveal that linear growth rates and …
The Saffman-Taylor viscous fingering instability occurs when a less viscous fluid displaces a more viscous one between narrowly spaced parallel plates in a Hele-Shaw cell. Experiments in radial flow geometry form fan-like patterns, in which fingers of different lengths compete, spread and split. Our weakly nonlinear analysis of the instability predicts these phenomena, which are beyond the scope of linear stability theory. Finger competition arises through enhanced growth of sub-harmonic perturbations, while spreading and splitting occur through the growth of harmonic modes. Nonlinear mode-cou…
The behaviour of a viscous drop squeezed between two horizontal planes is treated by both theory and experiment. When the squeezing force F is constant and surface tension is neglected, the theory predicts ultimate growth of the radius a~ t^{1/8}, in excellent agreement with our experiment. Surface tension at the drop boundary is included in the analysis, although negligibly small in the squeezing experiments. The circular evolution is found to be stable under small perturbations. If the force is reversed (F < 0), so that the plates are pulled or levered apart, the boundary of the drop is subj…
The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two dimensional actin flow which includes the polymerisation at the edge and depolymerisation in the bulk can be modelled as a Darcy flow, the cell shape and dynamics being then modelled by standard complex analysis methods. We use the theory of active gels to describe the orientational order of the filaments which varies from the border to the bulk. We show analytically that the…
We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of a moving interface in a Hele-Shaw cell subject to an in-plane applied electric field. We develop a spectrally accurate boundary integral method where a coupled integral equation system is formulated. Although the stiffness due to the high order spatial derivatives can be removed, the long-time simulation is still expensive since the evolving velocity of the interface drops dramatically as the interface expands. We remove this physically imposed stiffness by employing a rescaling scheme, which accelerates the slow dynamics and reduces the computational c…
We present experiments and theory describing the transition from viscosity-stabilized flow to gravitationally unstable fingering for two-phase flow in a 3D synthetic porous medium. Observation is made possible by the use of our newly developed table-top 3D-scanner based on optical index matching and laser-induced fluorescence, which is described in detail. In the experiment, a more dense, more viscous fluid injected at a fixed flow-rate from a point source at the top of the flow cell displaces a less viscous, less dense fluid. We observe a stable invasion zone near the inlet, which increases i…
Immiscible fluid-fluid displacement in porous media is of great importance in many engineering applications, such as enhanced oil recovery, agricultural irrigation, and geologic CO2 storage. Fingering phenomena, induced by the interface instability, are commonly encountered during displacement processes and somehow detrimental since such hydrodynamic instabilities can significantly reduce displacement efficiency. In this study, we report a possible adjustment in pore geometry which aims to suppress the capillary fingering in porous media with hierarchical structures. Through pore-scale simulat…
In this paper, the interfacial motion between two immiscible viscous fluids in the confined geometry of a Hele-Shaw cell is studied. We consider the influence of a thin wetting film trailing behind the displaced fluid, which dynamically affects the pressure drop at the fluid-fluid interface by introducing a nonlinear dependence on the interfacial velocity. In this framework, two cases of interest are analyzed: The injection-driven flow (expanding evolution), and the lifting plate flow (shrinking evolution). In particular, we investigate the possibility of controlling the development of fingeri…
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…
