Related papers: Polymer extension at stagnation points governs flo…
Diverse processes rely on the viscous flow of polymer solutions through porous media. In many cases, the macroscopic flow resistance abruptly increases above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium---but not in bulk solution. The reason…
Polymer solutions are often injected in porous media for applications such as oil recovery and groundwater remediation. As the fluid navigates the tortuous pore space, elastic stresses build up, causing the flow to become unstable at…
Polymer solutions are frequently used in enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation to improve the recovery of trapped non-aqueous fluids. However, applications are limited by an incomplete understanding of the flow in porous media.…
Fluid transport in microfluidic systems typically is laminar due to the low Reynolds number characteristic of the flow. The inclusion of suspended polymers imparts elasticity to fluids, allowing instabilities to be excited when substantial…
We investigate the effect of flow kinematics on the extensional viscosity of dilute polymer solutions by conducting dissipative particle dynamics simulations under uniaxial, planar, and biaxial extensional flows. At high extension rates,…
Many environmental, energy, and industrial processes involve the flow of polymer solutions in three-dimensional (3D) porous media where fluid is confined to navigate through complex pore space geometries. As polymers are transported through…
We investigate extensional viscosity and polymer conformation in dilute polymer solutions under uniaxial extensional flow using dissipative particle dynamics simulations. At high extension rates, polymers are significantly stretched by…
Fluid stretching in porous media governs the mixing of reactants, contaminants, and nutrients, yet how the solid microstructure controls the stretching statistics remains poorly understood. We investigate how porous-medium heterogeneity…
Behavior of a dilute polymer solution in a random three-dimensional flow with an average shear is studied experimentally. Polymer contribution to the shear stress is found to be more than two orders of magnitude higher than in a laminar…
We extend classical Flory-Rehner theory for the expansion and compression of porous materials such as cross-linked polymer networks. The theory includes volume exclusion, affinity with the solvent, and finite stretching of the polymer…
Recent works reveal the importance of chaotic flow fluctuations as a mechanism for the enhanced resistance observed in viscoelastic porous media flows, and also show how chaotic fluctuations are affected by the structural disorder of porous…
Recent experiments suggest that shear-enhanced growth of concentration fluctuations in polymer solutions is strongly influenced by solid boundaries. We analyze the dynamics of a model of a sheared polymer solution, accounting for the effect…
Polymer solutions subject to pressure driven flow and in nanoscale slit pores are systematically investigated using the dissipative particle dynamics approach. We investigated the effect of molecular weight, polymer concentration and flow…
The flow of viscoelastic fluids in porous media is encountered in many practical applications, such as in the enhanced oil recovery process or in the groundwater remediation. Once the flow rate exceeds a critical value in such flows, an…
When injected through a contraction, high molecular weight polymer solutions exhibit a sharp increase of apparent viscosity which originates from stretching polymer chains above a critical extension rate. This chain stretching can also…
Viscoelastic flows through porous media become unstable and chaotic beyond critical flow conditions, impacting industrial and biological processes. Recently, Walkama \textit{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{124}, 164501 (2020)] have shown…
Turbulent flows have been used for millennia to mix solutes; a familiar example is stirring cream into coffee. However, many energy, environmental, and industrial processes rely on the mixing of solutes in porous media where confinement…
How finite-sized material lines stretch in chaotic (mono-scale) and turbulent (multi-scale) flows remains a central but unresolved problem that governs mixing, transport and reaction. We show elongation is controlled by a finite-sampling…
In this work, we study the role of viscoelastic instability in the mechanical dispersion of fluid flow through porous media at high Peclet numbers. Using microfluidic experiments and numerical simulations, we show that viscoelastic…
A change of solute dispersion regime with the flow velocity has been studied both at the macroscopic and pore scales in a transparent array of capillary channels using an optical technique allowing for simultaneous local and global…