Imbibition: An Example of Nonconserved Cellular Automaton

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental and modeling study of imbibition in 2D porous media, demonstrating nonuniversal growth exponents influenced by evaporation and revealing self-organized criticality in the interface dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a cellular automaton model for imbibition based on first principles and validates it with experimental data, highlighting nonuniversal exponents and SOC behavior.

Findings

Correlation function exponent depends on evaporation.

Model results align with experimental observations.

Interface exhibits self-organized criticality.

Abstract

We report an imbibition experiment in 2D random porous media in which height - height correlation function grows with a nonuniversal exponent. We find the exponent to depend on evaporation. A cellular automaton model for imbibition based on first principles is presented. A numerical study of the model gives results which are consistent with the experiment. The interface is shown to exhibit self-organised criticality (SOC).