Spontaneous capillary imbibition is a classical problem in interfacial fluid dynamics with a broad range of applications, from microfluidics to agriculture. Here we study the duration of the cross-over between an initial linear growth of the imbibition front to the diffusive-like growth limit of Washburn's law. We show that local-resistance sources, such as the inertial resistance and the friction caused by the advancing meniscus, always limit the motion of an imbibing front. Both effects give rise to a cross-over of the growth exponent between the linear and the diffusive-like regimes. We show how this cross-over is much longer than previously thought - even longer than the time it takes the liquid to fill the porous medium. Such slowly slowing-down dynamics is likely to cause similar long cross-over phenomena in processes governed by wetting.
CITATION STYLE
Ruiz-Gutiérrez, É., Armstrong, S., Lévêque, S., Michel, C., Pagonabarraga, I., Wells, G. G., … Ledesma-Aguilar, R. (2022). The long cross-over dynamics of capillary imbibition. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 939. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.248
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