Drainage–Imbibition Cycles in a Model Open Fracture: Capillary Jumps, Hysteresis, Memory, and Dissipation
Please login to view abstract download link
This work deals with two-phase displacements of simple fluids in disordered environments. This is a challenging multiscale problem, in which capillary processes at small disorder scales behave cooperatively to govern the interfacial dynamics at continuum and large scales. Combining theory, numerical simulations, and experiments of quasistatic pressure-driven displacements in an imperfect Hele-Shaw cell (with randomly distributed gap-thickness constrictions and expansions) we explain the origin of hysteresis in the pressure–saturation diagram, the memory properties of cyclic trajectories, and the capillary sources of energy dissipation in this problem.