Anomalous percolation flow transition of yield stress fluids in porous media
Name
PhysRevFluids.4.063303.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.58 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1bcd732fc752a5ef52034762d59c92fe
Author(s)
Waisbord, Nicolas
Stoop, Norbert
Walkama, Derek M.
Dunkel, Jörn
Date Issued
June 2019
Journal
Physical review fluids
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Citation
Waisbord, Nicolas et al., "Anomalous Percolation Flow Transition of Yield Stress Fluids in Porous Media."
Physical Review Fluids 4,6 (June 2019): no. 063303 ©2019 Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Yield stress fluid (YSF) flows through porous materials are fundamental to biological, industrial, and geophysical processes, from blood and mucus transport to enhanced oil recovery. Despite their widely recognized importance across scales, the emergent transport properties of YSFs in porous environments remain poorly understood due to the nonlinear interplay between complex fluid rheology and pore microstructure. Here, we combine microfluidic experiments and nonlinear network theory to uncover an anomalous, hierarchical yielding process in the fluidization transition of a generic YSF flowing through a random medium. Percolation of a single fluidized filament gives way to pathways that branch and merge to form a complex flow network within the saturated porous medium. The evolution of the fluidized network with the flowing fraction of YSF results in a highly nonlinear flow conductivity and reveals a novel dispersion mechanism, resulting from the rerouting of fluid streamlines. The identified flow percolation phenomenon has broad implications for YSF transport in natural and engineered systems, and provides a tractable archetype for a diverse class of breakdown phenomena. © 2019 American Physical Society.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVFLUIDS.4.063303
