Miscible Displacements of Reactive and Anisotropic Dispersive Flows in Porous Media

The viscous fingering instability of miscible reactive–dispersive flows in a homogeneous porous media is investigated through nonlinear numerical simulations. In particular, the role of velocity-dependent transverse and longitudinal dispersions as well as the type and rate of auto-catalytic chemical reactions is analyzed. It is found that for a third-order auto-catalytic reaction, the higher the reaction rate, the more complex the finger structures. Furthermore, major differences between the flow development of third-order and second-order autocatalytic reactions are reported. In addition, the anisotropy and velocity dependence of the dispersion tensor are found to have a more profound effect on the fingering instability in the case of reactive flows than in the non-reactive ones. The qualitative characterization of the finger structures is explained by examining the flow velocity field and further quantified through an analysis of the average concentration and relative contact area.     

A boundary layer analysis of combined heat and mass transfer by natural convection from a concentrated source in a saturated porous medium

A boundary layer analysis was carried out to investigate the coupled phenomena of heat and mass transfer by natural convection from concentrated heat and mass sources embedded in saturated porous media. Both line and point source problems were treated. The boundary layer equations based on Darcy's law and Boussinesq approximation were solved by means of similarity transformation to obtain the details of velocity, temperature and concentration distributions above a concentrated heat source. Two important parameters, namely the Lewis number Le and the buoyancy ratioN were identified to conduct a series of numerical integrations. For the case of small Le, a substance diffuses further away from the plume centerline, such that the mass transfer influences both velocity and temperature profiles over a wide range. For large Le, on the other hand, the substance diffuses within a narrow range along the centerline. Naturally, the influence of mass transfer is limited to the level of the centerline velocity, so that a peaky velocity profile appears for positiveN whereas a velocity defect emerges along the centerline for negativeN. For such cases of large Le, the temperature profiles are found to be fairly insensitive to Le.     

The rheology of Hydroxy-propylguar (HPG) solutions and its influence on the flow through a porous medium and turbulent tube flow,respectively (Part 1)

The rheology of aqueous HPG solutions in the range 100 wppm to 5000 wppm is investigated. The flow through a porous medium and turbulent tube flow, respectively, of these solutions is studied as well. Especially with respect to the higher concentrations, the data correlate nicely only after the effect of shear is extracted, i.e., after the variable viscosity is taken into account. This is accomplished by working with an apparent viscosity _c , defined such that, the Hagen Poiseuille law (with _c ) holds in laminar tube flow.     

The structure and energetics of, and the plasticity caused by, Eshelby dislocations

The structure of coaxial, or Eshelby, dislocations are computed using isotropic elasticity for arrays of up to 500 dislocations. The energies of these arrays are determined in order to predict the lowest energy configuration and multiple meta-stable configurations are often found. The energy from these elasticity predictions shows good agreement with molecular statics simulations of aluminum. From these simulations, the torque-twist curves are predicted and compared with molecular dynamics simulations.     

The viscous-slip, diffusion-slip, and thermal-creep problems for a binary mixture of rigid spheres described by the linearized Boltzmann equation

An analytical version of the discrete-ordinates method (the ADO method) is used with recently established analytical expressions for the rigid-sphere scattering kernels to develop concise and particularly accurate solutions to the viscous-slip, the diffusion-slip, and the half-space thermal-creep problems for a binary gas mixture described by the linearized Boltzmann equation. In addition to a computation of the viscous-slip, the diffusion-slip, and the thermal-slip coefficients, for the case of Maxwell boundary conditions for each of the two species, the velocity, heat-flow, and shear-stress profiles are established for each species of particles. Numerical results are reported for two binary mixtures (Ne–Ar and He–Xe) with various molar concentrations.     

Determination of liquid water content and dielectric constant in porous media by the capacitive methodDétermination,par la méthode capacitive,de la teneur en eau liquide et de la constante diélectrique dans un milieu poreux

A capacitive sensor-based apparatus has been settled to determine the liquid water amount and dielectric constant in consolidated porous media. This technique relies on the dielectric properties of water, air, and mineral substrate. The experimental procedure is described for successively oven-dried samples at 323 K. It allows us to determine the sample dielectric constant as a function of the sample water amount. For limestones from Caen region, an affine relationship is found at 293 K. This is then compared with other empirical soils data and with existing homogeneisation techniques applied to undeformable heterogeneous dielectrics. To cite this article: T. Fen-Chong et al., C. R. Mecanique 332 (2004).