Numerical investigation of viscous fingering in a three-dimensional cubical domain

We perform three-dimensional numerical simulations to understand the role of viscous fingering in sweeping a high-viscous fluid (HVF). These fingers form due to the injection of a low-viscous fluid (LVF) into a porous media containing the high-viscous fluid. We find that the sweeping of HVF depends...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2023-05
Main Authors: Varshney, Garima, Pal, Anikesh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Fluid flow
Parameters
Porous media
Reynolds number
Sweeping
Viscosity ratio
Viscous fluids
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We perform three-dimensional numerical simulations to understand the role of viscous fingering in sweeping a high-viscous fluid (HVF). These fingers form due to the injection of a low-viscous fluid (LVF) into a porous media containing the high-viscous fluid. We find that the sweeping of HVF depends on different parameters such as the Reynolds number (\(Re\)) based on the inflow rate of the LVF, the Péclet number (\(Pe\)), and the logarithmic viscosity ratio of HVF and LVF, \(\mathfrak{R}\). At high values of \(Re\), \(Pe\), and \(\mathfrak{R}\), the fingers grow non-linearly, resulting in earlier tip splitting of the fingers and breakthrough, further leading to poor sweeping of the HVF. In contrast, the fingers evolve uniformly at low values of \(Re\), \(Pe\), and \(\mathfrak{R}\), resulting in an efficient sweeping of the HVF. We also estimate the sweep efficiency and conclude that the parameters \(Re\), \(Pe\) and \(\mathfrak{R}\) be chosen optimally to minimize the non-linear growth of the fingers to achieve an efficient sweeping of the HVF.
ISSN:2331-8422