- Author
-
Martys, N. S.
|
Cieplak, M.
|
Robbins, M. O.
- Title
- Critical Phenomena in Fluid Invasion of Porous Media.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Johns Hopkins Univ., Laurel, MD
- Journal
-
Physical Review Letters,
Vol. 66,
No. 8,
1058-1061,
February 25, 1991
- Sponsor
- National Science Foundation, Washington, DC
Petroleum Research Foundation
- Contract
- NSF-GRANT-DMR-8553271
22013-AC6,7
- Keywords
-
porous materials
|
pressure
|
fluids
- Abstract
- We present a phase diagram for fluid invasion of porous media as a function of pressure P and the contact angle 0 of the invading fluid. Increasing P leads to percolation above a critical Oc, and depending below Oc. Depinning is characterized by a diverging coherence length and the power-law distribution of events typical of self-organized critical phenomena. At the transition from percolation to depinning another correlation length diverges and an order parameter, an effective macroscopic surface tension, becomes nonzero. The fluid interface changes from self-similar to self-affine. Results arc compared to experiments.