Transient immiscible two-phase flow

RESEARCH THEME 4:

Study transient phenomena in porous media, particularly the elaxation behavior before the system reaches a steady-state and the crossover length and times associated with the different forces involved. The  physics of  flow in porous  and  fractured  media  is of  large importance  for the oil industry, hydrology, soil mechanics, environmental engineering and even the human body.

Viscous fingering Glycerol is displaced by air in a model of a porous medium. The gray tones in glycerol indicates the pressure. Models of porous media represent sandstone filled with oil that are being displaced by sea water during oil extraction under the sea bed. Picture courtesy: Department of Physics, UiO.

Description:
 Understanding how different short (e.g. capillary forces) and long range (e.g. viscous forces) act in different flow regimes and the specific scaling followed by the Two-phase flow involved (often fractal) is crucial to a successful upscaling of the results. This is necessary to bridge the gap between laboratorial experiments and industrial or environmental applications. A thorough experimental investigation is necessary to predict the structure and transition between different regimes both in 2D and 3D. In particular, very few experiments have been performed to study transient phenomena in 3D, due to the natural difficulty to observe the flows. We will investigate non-trivial fluid invasion mechanisms such as corner and film, which are bound to occur in the larger time scales of importance for industrial and geological applications.

Investigators:

Principal Investigator for Research Theme  4:
Professor Knut Jørgen Måløy.

Partners:
Profs Dag Dysthe, Eirik Grude Flekkøy, Alex Hansen, Bjørnar Sandnes, Stéphane Santucci, Laurent Talon, Ole Torsæter, Renaud Toussaint.

Postdoctoral Fellows: 
Marcel Moura.

Selected articles before center launch:

  1. Moura M, Fiorentino E.-A., Måløy K.J., Schafer G., and Toussaint R., Impact of sample geometry on the measurement of pressure-saturation curves: experiments and simulations. Water Resour. Res., 51, doi:10.1002/ 2015WR017196 (2015).
  2. R. Tuossaint, G. Løvoll, Y. Meheust, K. J. Måløy, and J. Schmittbuhl, Influence of pore-scale disorder on viscous fingering during drainage. Europhys Lett. 71, 583, (2005). doi: 10.1209/epl/i2005-10136-9
  3. G. Løvoll, Y. Meheust, R. Toussaint, J. Schmittbuhl, and K. J. Måløy. Growth activity during fingering in a porous Hele-Shaw cell. Phys. Rev. E 70, 026301 (2004)
  4. Y. Meheust, G. Løvoll, K. J. Måløy, and J. Schmittbuhl, Gravity stabilized viscous fingering. Phys. Rev. E. 66, 051603 (2002)
  5. K. J. Måløy, Liv Furuberg, J. Feder and T. Jøssang. Dynamics of Slow Drainage in Porous Media. Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 2161-2164, (1992)
  6. K. J. Måløy, Jens. Feder and T. Jøssang. Viscous Fingering Fractals in Porous Media. Phys. Rev. Lett. 55, 2688-2691, (1985). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.55.2688

Recent articles:

  1. Eriksen, Fredrik Kvalheim; Toussaint, Renaud; Turquet, Antoine Léo; Måløy, Knut Jørgen & Flekkøy, Eirik Grude (2017). Pneumatic fractures in confined granular media. Physical Review E. Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics.  ISSN 1063-651X. . doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.95.062901
  2. Moura, Marcel; Måløy, Knut Jørgen & Toussaint, Renaud (2017). Critical behavior in porous media flow. Europhysics letters.  ISSN 0295-5075.  118(1) . doi:10.1209/0295-5075/118/14004
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