Pore-scale effects during the transition from capillary- to viscosity-dominated flow dynamics within microfluidic porous-like domains – ScienceOpen
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      Pore-scale effects during the transition from capillary- to viscosity-dominated flow dynamics within microfluidic porous-like domains

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          Abstract

          We perform a numerical and experimental study of immiscible two-phase flows within predominantly 2D transparent PDMS microfluidic domains with disordered pillar-like obstacles, that effectively serve as artificial porous structures. Using a high sensitivity pressure sensor at the flow inlet, we capture experimentally the pressure dynamics under fixed flow rate conditions as the fluid–fluid interface advances within the porous domain, while also monitoring the corresponding phase distribution patterns using optical microscopy. Our experimental study covers 4 orders of magnitude with respect to the injection flow rate and highlights the characteristics of immiscible displacement processes during the transition from the capillarity-controlled interface displacement regime at lower flow rates, where the pores are invaded sequentially in the form of Haines jumps, to the viscosity-dominated regime, where multiple pores are invaded simultaneously. In the capillary regime, we recover a clear correlation between the recorded inlet pressure and the pore-throat diameter invaded by the interface that follows the Young–Laplace equation, while during the transition to the viscous regime such a correlation is no longer evident due to multiple pore-throats being invaded simultaneously (but also due to significant viscous pressure drop along the inlet and outlet channels, that effectively mask capillary effects). The performed experimental study serves for the validation of a robust Level-Set model capable of explicitly tracking interfacial dynamics at sub-pore scale resolutions under identical flow conditions. The numerical model is validated against both well-established theoretical flow models, that account for the effects of viscous and capillary forces on interfacial dynamics, and the experimental results obtained using the developed microfluidic setup over a wide range of capillary numbers. Our results show that the proposed numerical model recovers very well the experimentally observed flow dynamics in terms of phase distribution patterns and inlet pressures, but also the effects of viscous flow on the apparent (i.e. dynamic) contact angles in the vicinity of the pore walls. For the first time in the literature, this work clearly shows that the proposed numerical approach has an undoubtable strong potential to simulate multiphase flow in porous domains over a wide range of Capillary numbers.

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          The Dynamics of Capillary Flow

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            Numerical models and experiments on immiscible displacements in porous media

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                i.zarikos@ipta.demokritos.gr
                Journal
                Sci Rep
                Sci Rep
                Scientific Reports
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2045-2322
                16 February 2021
                16 February 2021
                2021
                : 11
                : 3891
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.6809.7, ISNI 0000 0004 0622 3117, School of Mineral Resources Engineering, , Technical University of Crete, ; Chania, Greece
                [2 ]GRID grid.5719.a, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9713, Institute of Mechanics (CE), , University of Stuttgart, ; Stuttgart, Germany
                [3 ]GRID grid.6083.d, ISNI 0000 0004 0635 6999, Environmental Research Laboratory, , National Center for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’, ; Agia Paraskevi, Greece
                [4 ]GRID grid.5719.a, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9713, Stuttgart Center for Simulation Technology, , University of Stuttgart, ; Stuttgart, Germany
                Article
                83065
                10.1038/s41598-021-83065-8
                7886905
                33594146
                c439261e-87f3-4574-941c-dc899dab6941
                © The Author(s) 2021

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 10 September 2020
                : 28 January 2021
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013209, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation;
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003448, General Secretariat for Research and Technology;
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft;
                Award ID: 327154368
                Award ID: 327154368
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
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                © The Author(s) 2021

                Uncategorized
                environmental impact,chemical engineering,hydrology
                Uncategorized
                environmental impact, chemical engineering, hydrology

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