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

The displacement of a viscous liquid by air in the narrow gap between two parallel plates - a Hele-Shaw channel - is an exemplar of complex pattern formation. Typically, bubbles or fingers of air propagate steadily at low values of the driving parameter. However, as the driving parameter increases, they can exhibit disordered pattern-forming dynamics. In this paper, we demonstrate experimentally that a remote perturbation of the bubble's tip can drive time-periodic bubble pro...

We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of a moving interface in a Hele-Shaw cell subject to an in-plane applied electric field. We develop a spectrally accurate boundary integral method where a coupled integral equation system is formulated. Although the stiffness due to the high order spatial derivatives can be removed, the long-time simulation is still expensive since the evolving velocity of the interface drops dramatically as the interface expands. We remove this physicall...

We present a theoretical and numerical study on the (in)stability of the interface between two immiscible liquids, i.e., viscous fingering, in angled Hele-Shaw cells across a range of capillary numbers ($Ca$). We consider two types of angled Hele-Shaw cells: diverging cells with a positive depth gradient and converging cells with a negative depth gradient, and compare those against parallel cells without a depth gradient. A modified linear stability analysis is employed to de...

When a more mobile fluid displaces another immiscible one in a porous medium, viscous fingering propagates with a partial sweep, which hinders oil recovery and soil remedy. We experimentally investigate the feasibility of tuning such fingering propagation in a non-uniform narrow passage with a radial injection, which is widely used in various applications. We show that a radially converging cell can suppress the common viscous fingering observed in a uniform passage, and a fu...

Viscous fingering (VF) is an interfacial instability that occurs in a narrow confinement or porous medium when a less-viscous fluid pushes a more viscous one, producing finger-like patterns. Controlling the VF instability is essential to enhance the efficiency of various technological applications. However, the control of VF instability has been challenging and so far focused on simple Newtonian fluids of constant viscosity. Here, we extend to complex yield-stress fluids and ...

Viscous fingering patterns form in confined geometries at the interface between two fluids as the lower-viscosity fluid displaces the one with higher viscosity. Previous studies have examined the most unstable wavelength of the patterns that form using both linear-stability analysis and the dynamics of finger growth in the nonlinear regime. Interesting differences in dynamics have been seen between rectilinear and radial geometries as well as between fluid pairs that are immi...

Motivated by studies suggesting that the patterns exhibited by the collectively expanding fronts of thin cells during the closing of a wound [Mark et al., Biophys. J., 98:361-370, 2010] and the shapes of single cells crawling on surfaces [Callan-Jones et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 100:258106, 2008] are due to fingering instabilities, we investigate the stability of actively driven interfaces under Hele-Shaw confinement. An initially radial interface between a pair of viscous flui...

We develop a stream function approach for the horizontal Hele-Shaw, Saffman-Taylor finger. The model yields a nonlinear time-dependent differential equation. The finger widths derived from the equation are $1>\lambda>\frac{1}{\sqrt{5}}$, in units of half the width of the Hele-Shaw cell, in accordance with observation. The equation contains the correct dispersion relation for the creation of the finger instability. In an accompanying paper the stationary solutions of the equat...

Being a major limiting factor for the efficiency of various technologies, such as Enhanced Oil Recovery, the viscous fingering (or Saffman--Taylor) instability has been extensively studied, especially for simple Newtonian fluids. Here, we experimentally and theoretically demonstrate a vital control of inhibiting the viscous fingering instability for complex (yield-stress) fluids to generate a complete sweep with a flat interface. Using a rectangular tapered cell, we first exp...

The finger-like branching pattern that occurs when a less viscous fluid displaces a more viscous one confined between two parallel plates has been widely studied as a classical example of a mathematically-tractable hydrodynamic instability since the time of Saffman and Taylor. Fingering in such Hele-Shaw geometries have been generated not only with Newtonian fluids but also with various non-Newtonian fluids including fine granular material displaced by gas, liquid, or large g...