Suppression of viscous fluid fingering: a piecewise constant-injection process

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, reproducible piecewise constant injection method to significantly suppress viscous fingering patterns in Hele-Shaw cells, reducing finger size by an order of magnitude.

Contribution

The study presents a novel injection protocol that effectively controls viscous fingering, improving pattern stability in fluid displacement processes.

Findings

Viscous fingers are reduced in size by tenfold.

The method is efficient and easily reproducible.

Pattern suppression enhances practical fluid displacement applications.

Abstract

The injection of a fluid into another of larger viscosity in a Hele-Shaw cell usually results in the formation of highly branched patterns. Despite the richness of these structures, in many practical situations such convoluted shapes are quite undesirable. In this letter we propose an efficient and easily reproducible way to restrain these instabilities based on a simple piecewise constant pumping protocol. It results in a reduction in the size of the viscous fingers by one order of magnitude.