Effects of Pressure Oscillations on Drainage in an Elastic Porous Medium

M. Jankov (1) , G. Løvoll , H. A Knudsen , Knut Jørgen J Måløy (2) , R. Planet (3) , Renaud Toussaint (4) , Eirik Grude Flekkøy (5)

1 UiO - University of Oslo
2 Department of Physics [Oslo]
3 ECM - Departament d'Estructura i Constituents de la Materia
4 IPGS - Institut de physique du globe de Strasbourg
5 PoreLab [Oslo]

The effects of seismic stimulation on the flow of two immiscible fluids in an elastic synthetic porous medium is experimentally investigated. A wetting fluid is slowly evacuated from the medium, while a pressure oscillation is applied on the injected non-wetting fluid. The amplitude and frequency of the pressure oscillations as well as the evacuation speed are kept constant throughout an experiment. The resulting morphology of the invading structure is found to be strongly dependent on the interplay between the amplitude and the frequency of the applied pressure oscillations and the elasticity of the porous medium. Different combinations of these properties yield morphologically similar structures, allowing a classification of structures that is found to depend on a proposed dimensionless number.

Keywords: stimulated flow; porous material; elasticity; drainage displacement; two- phase flow; viscous forces; capillary forces

Domains: Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Mechanics [physics]; Geophysics [physics.geo-ph]

M. Jankov, G. Løvoll, H. A Knudsen, Knut Jørgen J Måløy, R. Planet, et al.. Effects of Pressure Oscillations on Drainage in an Elastic Porous Medium. Transport in Porous Media, 2010, 84 (3), pp.569-585. ⟨10.1007/s11242-009-9521-z⟩. ⟨insu-02377796⟩