Intermittency of Fluid Imbibition in Disordered Media

  • X. Clotet Laboratoire de Physique , Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
  • S. Santucci Laboratoire de Physique , Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
  • J. Ortín Departament d’Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria, Universitat de Barcelona

Abstract

We present an experimental study of the global velocity spatially averaged over the length scale l, Vl(t), of an air-liquid interface during the forced-flow imbibition of a viscous wetting liquid in a disordered medium. Thanks to a high resolution fast camera, we have followed directly the imbibition front and observed a complex dynamics, governed by power-law distributed avalanches on a wide range of durations and sizes [1, 2]. We characterize here this intermittent behavior by studying the statistical properties of the global velocity increments DVl(x) / Vl(t + x) - Vl(t) for various time lags x. In particular we show that the shape of the PDF of DVl(x) evolve with increasing x from fat tail exponentially stretched PDFs towards a Gaussian PDF above a characteristic time xc, which corresponds to the characteristic avalanche duration.

Published
Aug 14, 2012
How to Cite
CLOTET, X.; SANTUCCI, S.; ORTÍN, J.. Intermittency of Fluid Imbibition in Disordered Media. Revista Cubana de Física, [S.l.], v. 29, n. 1E, p. 1E62-1E65, aug. 2012. ISSN 2224-7939. Available at: <http://revistacubanadefisica.org/index.php/rcf/article/view/RCF_29-1E_062_2012>. Date accessed: 29 mar. 2024.
Section
Original Articles (E)