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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 45: Microfluidics (joint session DY/CPP)
DY 45.5: Talk
Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 18:00–18:15, ZEU 147
Flow in Responsive Porous Media — •Thomas Darwent1, Enrico Segre2, Ran Holtzman3, and Lucas Goehring1 — 1Nottingham Trent University — 2Weizmann Institute of Science — 3Coventry University
Fluid flows in porous media, such as sand, rocks and biological tissues, are controlled by the geometry of that media and the properties of the fluids. Here, we explore the situation where the properties of the fluid and solid are coupled, such that an invading fluid modifies the structure of a porous medium around it. Specifically, we look at the case where the porous matrix is deformable, and we show that a new invasion pattern is seen: capillary fracturing. This results from the fluid pushing and pulling on individual grains making up the solid body, which changes the pressures required to flow past, or invade, those grains. This effect occurs in hydrocarbon recovery and CO2 sequestration where fluids are injected underground and deform the local structure. To study this problem, we use soft lithography and microfluidic techniques to produce PDMS micromodels, allowing us to tune the elasticity and disorder of a model porous medium. Along with numerical simulations, we show that deformation caused by the fluid leads to localised fingering patterns in more compliant materials, and that this effect is restricted by increasing the disorder in the system.