Transition from viscous fingers to compact displacement during unstable drainage in porous media

Abstract

We describe a crossover from the viscous fingering instability to a compact invasion regime during viscously unstable drainage of porous media, and we investigate the underlying mechanisms of this compact fluid displacement. The study is based on a series of drainage experiments in a radial porous Hele-Shaw cell where we systematically vary the viscosity of the defending (wetting) fluid and the overpressure of the invading (nonwetting) fluid to map out the resulting invasion structures as a function of viscosity ratio and injection pressure. We show that above a threshold of injection pressure and viscosity ratio a more stable and compact invasion structure emerges within the viscous fingering patterns, i.e., a roughly circular displacement with viscous fingers on the outside. The onset of the stable displacement is found to begin at a rather low viscosity ratio M between the invading and defending fluids, i.e., when M≥10−3 for injection pressures of 3–5 kPa. We find that the ratio between the length of the outer fingers and the size of the compact invasion scales with the viscosity ratio and approaches a more or less constant value during growth, resulting in structures with proportionate growth and larger compact invasions for higher viscosity ratios. As opposed to the viscous fingering instability, we describe rich ganglion dynamics within the compact invasion structures and show that the pressure gradient is not screened by the outer fingers.