Radial fingering in a Hele-Shaw cell: a weakly nonlinear analysis

We implement a phase-field simulation of the dynamics of two fluids with arbitrary viscosity contrast in a rectangular Hele-Shaw cell. We demonstrate the use of this technique in different situations including the linear regime, the stationary Saffman-Taylor fingers and the multifinger competition dynamics, for different viscosity contrasts. The method is quantitatively tested against analytical predictions and other numerical results. A detailed analysis of convergence to th...

A rest fluid displaced by a less viscous fluid in a porous medium triggers the so-called Saffman-Taylor instability at their contact front and hence forms complicated finger-like patterns. When the two fluids are miscible, the surface tension at their contact front vanishes, leaving the variation in viscosity dominant the contribution to the instability. The phenomena, named viscous fingering, can be studied by the analogy of a single-phase flow in the Hele-Shaw cell, a quasi...

We study the effects of some injection policies used in oil recovery process. The Saffman-Taylor instability occurs when a less viscous fluid is displacing a more viscous one, in a rectangular Hele-Shaw cell. The injection of $N$ successive intermediate phases with constant viscosities (the multi-layer Hele-Shaw model) was studied in some recent papers, where a minimization of the Saffman-Taylor instability was obtained for large enough $N$. However, in this paper we get a pa...

We consider the steady-state fingering instability of an elastic membrane separating two fluids of different density under external pressure in a rotating Hele-Shaw cell. Both inextensible and highly extensible membranes are considered, and the role of membrane tension is detailed in each case. Both systems exhibit a centrifugally-driven Rayleigh-Taylor--like instability when the density of the inner fluid exceeds that of the outer one, and this instability competes with the ...

We solve numerically the nonlinear differential equation for the Hele-Shaw, Saffman-Taylor problem derived in the preceding work. Stationary solutions with no free phenomenological parameters are found to fit the measured patterns. The calculated finger half-widths as a function of the physical parameters of the cell, compare satisfactorily with experiment.

The classical model for studying one-phase Hele-Shaw flows is based on a highly nonlinear moving boundary problem with the fluid velocity related to pressure gradients via a Darcy-type law. In a standard configuration with the Hele-Shaw cell made up of two flat stationary plates, the pressure is harmonic. Therefore, conformal mapping techniques and boundary integral methods can be readily applied to study the key interfacial dynamics, including the Saffman-Taylor instability ...

Viscous fingers have been produced in the lifting Hele-Shaw cell, with concentric circular grooves etched onto the lower plate. The invading fluid (air) enters the defending newtonian fluid - olive oil as fingers proceeding radially inwards towards the centre. The fingers are interrupted at the circular groove, and reform as secondary fingers. The effect of the grooves is to speed up the fingering process considerably and the fingers now reach the centre much faster. We expla...

The flow in a Hele-Shaw cell with a time-increasing gap poses a unique shrinking interface problem. When the upper plate of the cell is lifted perpendicularly at a prescribed speed, the exterior less viscous fluid penetrates the interior more viscous fluid, which generates complex, time-dependent interfacial patterns through the Saffman-Taylor instability. The pattern formation process sensitively depends on the lifting speed and is still not fully understood. For some liftin...

A comprehensive, temporal and spatiotemporal linear stability analyses of a (driven) Oldroyd-B fluid with Poiseuille base flow profile in a horizontally aligned, square, Hele-Shaw cell is reported to identify the viable regions of topological transition of the advancing interface. The dimensionless groups governing stability are the Reynolds number, $Re = \frac{b^2 \rho \mathcal{U}_0}{12 \eta_0 L}$, the elasticity number, $E = \frac{12 \lambda (1-\nu)\eta_0}{\rho b^2}$ and th...

Viscous flows in a quasi-two-dimensional Hele-Shaw geometry can lead to an interfacial instability when one fluid, of viscosity $\eta_{in}$ displaces another of higher viscosity, $\eta_{out}$. Recent studies have shown that there is a delay in the onset of fingering in miscible fluids as the viscosity ratio, $\eta_{in}/\eta_{out}$, increases and approaches unity; the interface can remain stable even though the displacing liquid is less viscous. This paper shows that a delayed...