Gas compression systematically delays the onset of viscous fingering
arXiv:2311.18447 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.224002
Abstract
Using gas to drive liquid from a Hele-Shaw cell leads to classical viscous fingering. Strategies for suppressing fingering have received substantial attention. For steady injection of an incompressible gas, the intensity of fingering is controlled by the capillary number Ca. Here, we show that gas compression leads to an unsteady injection rate controlled primarily by a dimensionless compressibility number C. Increasing C systematically delays the onset of fingering at high Ca, highlighting compressibility as an overlooked but fundamental aspect of gas-driven fingering.
References in corpus (4)
- Numerical investigation of controlling interfacial instabilities in non-standard Hele-Shaw configurations
- Controlling fingering instabilities in Hele-Shaw flows in the presence of wetting film effects
- Compression-driven viscous fingering in a radial Hele-Shaw cell
- Dynamics of compression-driven gas-liquid displacement in a capillary tube