Ferer M, Bromhal Grant S, Smith Duane H
National Energy Technology Laboratory, and Department of Physics, University of West Virginia, Morgantown, West Virginia 26507-0880, USA.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2003 May;67(5 Pt 1):051601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.67.051601. Epub 2003 May 12.
A pore-level model of drainage, which has been quantitatively validated, is used to study the effect of increased injection rate (i.e., increased capillary number) upon the flow, with matched-viscosity fluids. For small enough capillary number, the flows from the model correctly reproduce the flows from the invasion percolation with trapping (IPWT) model. As the capillary number is increased, the early-time flows mimic those of the IPWT-model, but then deviate towards compact flow at a characteristic time that decreases as the capillary number increases. That is, the larger the capillary number, the sooner the flow crosses over from IPWT flows towards compact (linear) flows.
