Spontaneous imbibition dynamics in interacting multi-capillary systems: A generalized model

TL;DR

This paper develops a generalized one-dimensional model to analyze spontaneous imbibition in interacting multi-capillary systems, revealing how pore arrangement and size contrast influence flow dynamics and breakthrough times, providing insights closer to real porous media.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new generalized model for spontaneous imbibition in interacting capillaries, accounting for pore arrangement effects, which improves upon the traditional bundle-of-tubes approach.

Findings

Flow dynamics depend on radii contrast and capillary arrangement.

Breakthrough time varies between 0.31 and 0.42 dimensionless units.

Interacting capillary systems better represent real porous media.

Abstract

Bundle-of-tubes model was previously used to understand the flow behaviour in a porous medium. The interacting nature of the pores within a porous medium can be well depicted by an interacting capillary model. However, the arrangement of pores is crucial in understanding the flow behaviour in an interacting capillary system, which also leads to different governing equations of spontaneous imbibition. To this end, in the present work, we first develop a generalized one-dimensional lubrication approximation model to predict the imbibition behaviour in an interacting multi-capillary system. Using our generalized model, we observe that the flow dynamics, the capillary having the leading meniscus and the breakthrough time are governed by the contrast in the radii and the arrangement of the capillaries. We also show that during breakthrough, the saturation of the multi-capillary system depends on the arrangement of the capillaries. We show that the breakthrough in the bundle-of-tubes model occurs at a dimensionless time of $0.5$, while the breakthrough in the interacting capillary system occurs between the dimensionless times $0.31$ and $0.42$, for the capillary system considered in this study. Comparing the interacting multi-capillary system with the bundle-of-tubes model, we present substantial deviations and show that the interacting capillary system is closer to the real porous medium.