Abstract
Using gas to drive liquid from a Hele-Shaw cell leads to classical viscous fingering. Strategies for suppressing fingering have received substantial attention. For steady injection of an incompressible gas, the intensity of fingering is controlled by the capillary number Ca. Here, we show that gas compression leads to an unsteady injection rate controlled primarily by a dimensionless compressibility number . Increasing systematically delays the onset of fingering at high Ca, highlighting compressibility as an overlooked but fundamental aspect of gas-driven fingering.
- Received 28 February 2023
- Revised 15 September 2023
- Accepted 19 October 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.224002
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
Control Knob Found for Viscous Fingers
Published 29 November 2023
The onset time for “viscous fingering”—an instability that can occur at a gas–liquid boundary—depends on the compressibility of the gas, offering a way to control the behavior.
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