1 research outputs found
Collective transport of droplets through porous media
The flow of deformable particles, such as droplets, dragged by a fluid,
through a network of narrow pores inside rocks or other porous media is key in
a range of applications, from enhanced oil recovery and water filtration to lab
on a chip sorting of cells. The collective dynamics and its impact on the flow
are poorly understood. Here, using droplets as a prototype, we show that
collective transport can occur for conditions under which a single particle
would get trapped at a pore channel. When a series of droplets gets trapped,
the fluids flow is affected significantly, leading to an increase of the
pressure difference across the pore channels, which in turn squeezes the
particles through the channels. We analyze the conditions for a single droplet
to flow through one pore and derive the corresponding Bond number. We also
obtain a rule for the collective flow of droplets in porous media