Journal
SCIENCE ADVANCES
Volume 7, Issue 45, Pages -Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj2619
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Funding
- American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund [PRF 59026-DNI9]
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program [DGE1656466]
- Mary and Randall Hack Graduate Award of the High Meadows Environmental Institute
- Princeton University Library Open Access Fund
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Researchers have found that elastic instability in porous media leads to an anomalous increase in flow resistance, despite the small Reynolds number. Their study helps deepen understanding of complex fluid flows and provides guidelines for various applications.
Many energy, environmental, industrial, and microfluidic processes rely on the flow of polymer solutions through porous media. Unexpectedly, the macroscopic flow resistance often increases above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium, but not in bulk solution. The reason why has been a puzzle for over half a century. Here, by directly visualizing flow in a transparent 3D porous medium, we demonstrate that this anomalous increase is due to the onset of an elastic instability in which the flow exhibits strong spatiotemporal fluctuations reminiscent of inertial turbulence, despite the small Reynolds number. Our measurements enable us to quantitatively establish that the energy dissipated by pore-scale fluctuations generates the anomalous increase in the overall flow resistance. Because the macroscopic resistance is one of the most fundamental descriptors of fluid flow, our results both help deepen understanding of complex fluid flows and provide guidelines to inform a broad range of applications.
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