Is Chaotic Advection Inherent to Porous Media Flow?

Abstract

We show that chaotic advection is inherent to flow through all types of porous media, from granular and packed media to fractured and open networks. The basic topological complexity inherent to all porous media gives rise to chaotic flow dynamics under steady flow conditions, where fluid deformation local to stagnation points imparts a 3D fluid mechanical analog of the baker's map. The ubiquitous nature of chaotic advection has significant implications for the description of transport, mixing, chemical reaction and biological activity in porous media.

Helical Flow and Transient Solute Dilution in Porous Media

“…The mixing enhancement observed at this scale is complementary to that achieved at the microscopic level (Stroock et al 2002;Lester et al 2013), which is parametrized with the aid of the dispersion tensor.…”

“…This can greatly enhance mixing on that scale (Lester et al 2013). Yet, for applications in the fields of hydrogeology and chemical engineering, pore-scale processes are upscaled, and the porous medium is considered a continuum.…”

Laminar heat transfer in the “MLLM” static mixer

“…This kind of geometry, together with the Kenics Ò mixer [1] and the ''F'' mixer [11] among others, belongs to a specific class of static mixers based on a three-dimensional implementation of the baker's map concept [13]. Some authors refer to it as the baker's flow [30,31] and others as SAR (split and recombine [32]). The mechanism is illustrated, in Fig.…”

Simulating anomalous dispersion in porous media using the unstructured lattice Boltzmann method

“…Particles passively advected by the flow in the pore-space, so-called Lagrangian particles, follow trajectories with periods of almost stagnation punctuated by bursts of fast fluctuating motion [1][2][3]. In a Berea sandstone sample, it was shown by a three dimensional simulation that this intermittent behavior was equally significant in both longitudinal (the mean flow direction) and transverse directions [3].…”