TY - JOUR
T1 - Imbibition in geometries with axial variations
AU - Reyssat, Mathilde
AU - Courbin, Laurent
AU - Reyssat, Etienne
AU - Stone, Howard A.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Benoit Scheid and Laura Guglielmini for helpful discussions and Egide (Lavoisier scholarship), the French Ministry of Defense (grant 07.60.035.00.470.75.01 from the DGA), the Harvard MRSEC (DMR-0213805) and Schlumberger Cambridge Research for support of this research.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - When surface wetting drives liquids to invade porous media or microstructured materials with uniform channels, the penetration distance is known to increase as the square root of time. We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, that shape variations of the channel, in the flow direction, modify this 'diffusive' response. At short times, the shape variations are not significant and the imbibition is still diffusive. However, at long times, different power-law responses occur, and their exponents are uniquely connected to the details of the geometry. Experiments performed with conical tubes clearly show the two theoretical limits. Several extensions of these ideas are described.
AB - When surface wetting drives liquids to invade porous media or microstructured materials with uniform channels, the penetration distance is known to increase as the square root of time. We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, that shape variations of the channel, in the flow direction, modify this 'diffusive' response. At short times, the shape variations are not significant and the imbibition is still diffusive. However, at long times, different power-law responses occur, and their exponents are uniquely connected to the details of the geometry. Experiments performed with conical tubes clearly show the two theoretical limits. Several extensions of these ideas are described.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0022112008003996
DO - 10.1017/S0022112008003996
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:56149111304
SN - 0022-1120
VL - 615
SP - 335
EP - 344
JO - Journal of Fluid Mechanics
JF - Journal of Fluid Mechanics
ER -