English

Residual Saturation under Pressure-Controlled Drainage

Statistical Mechanics 2026-08-05 v1

Abstract

Here, pressure-controlled drainage is formulated as bond percolation with trapping on the pore-network graph, establishing a direct connection between percolation theory and pressure--saturation relations. In two dimensions, the deviation of the residual saturation from its non-vanishing thermodynamic limit obeys a finite-size scaling law with exponent δ0.25\delta \approx 0.25, independent of microscopic details of the lattice. In three dimensions, finite-size corrections decay more rapidly (δ0.75\delta \approx 0.75), while the asymptotic residual saturation remains finite and depends on coordination number. This extends the standard invasion-percolation picture beyond the breakthrough state, where the invading cluster is fractal and the invaded-phase saturation vanishes in the infinite-size limit.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.04748,
  title  = {Residual Saturation under Pressure-Controlled Drainage},
  author = {Fernando Alonso-Marroquin and Hans J. Herrmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.04748},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 4 figures