Controlling viscous fingering instabilities of complex fluids

Abstract

Despite their aesthetic elegance, wavy or fingering patterns emerge when a fluid of low viscosity pushes another immiscible fluid of high viscosity in a porous medium, producing an incomplete sweep and hampering several crucial technologies. Some examples include chromatography, printing, coating flows, oil-well cementing, as well as large-scale technologies of groundwater and enhanced oil recovery. Controlling such fingering instabilities is notoriously challenging and unresolved for complex fluids of varying viscosity because the fluids’ mobility contrast is often predetermined and yet the predominant drive in determining a stable, flat or unstable, wavy interface. Here we show, experimentally and theoretically, how to suppress or control the primary viscous fingering patterns of a common type of complex fluids (of shear-thinning with a low yield stress) using a radially tapered cell of linearly varying gap thickness, h(r). Experimentally, we displace a complex viscous (PAA) solution with gas under a constant flow rate (Q), varied between 0.02 and 2 slpm (standard liter per minute), in a radially converging cell with a constant gap-thickness gradient, α= dh/ dr< 0 . A stable, uniform interface emerges at low Q and in a steeper cell (i.e., greater | α|) for the complex fluids, whereas unstable fingering pattern at high Q and smaller | α| . Our theoretical predictions with a simplified linear stability analysis show an agreeable stability criterion with experimental data, quantitatively offering strategies to control complex fluid-fluid patterns and displacements in microfluidics and porous media.