• Letter

Trapping and escape of viscous fingers in a soft Hele-Shaw cell

Gunnar G. Peng, Callum Cuttle, Finn Box, Jian Hui Guan, Anne Juel, Christopher W. MacMinn, and Draga Pihler-Puzović
Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, L062001 – Published 8 June 2022
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Abstract

Viscous flow in the narrow gap between a rigid plate and a confined elastic solid has been observed to “choke” at high flow rates, due to the deforming solid making contact with the plate and sealing the gap. When the viscous flow is driven by injection of a gas bubble, the advancing meniscus is susceptible to the viscous-fingering instability. By comparing fingering experiments with axisymmetric numerical simulations, we demonstrate that, depending on the width of the fingers, the fingering instability can either promote or suppress choking, i.e., cause the system to choke when an axisymmetric system would not, or vice versa.

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  • Received 7 March 2022
  • Accepted 12 May 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.7.L062001

©2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Fluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Gunnar G. Peng1,2, Callum Cuttle3, Finn Box2, Jian Hui Guan3,4, Anne Juel2, Christopher W. MacMinn3, and Draga Pihler-Puzović2

  • 1Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2BX, England, United Kingdom
  • 2Department of Physics and Astronomy and Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, England, United Kingdom
  • 3Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PJ, England, United Kingdom
  • 4Department of Mathematics, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA

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Issue

Vol. 7, Iss. 6 — June 2022

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