Scaling of Convective Mixing in Porous Media
Convective mixing in porous media is triggered by a Rayleigh-Bénard-type hydrodynamic instability as a result of an unstable density stratification of fluids. While convective mixing has been studied extensively, the fundamental behavior of the dissolution flux and its dependence on the system param...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
American Physical Society
2013
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77160 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7370-2332 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3958-7382 |
| Summary: | Convective mixing in porous media is triggered by a Rayleigh-Bénard-type hydrodynamic instability as a result of an unstable density stratification of fluids. While convective mixing has been studied extensively, the fundamental behavior of the dissolution flux and its dependence on the system parameters are not yet well understood. Here, we show that the dissolution flux and the rate of fluid mixing are determined by the mean scalar dissipation rate. We use this theoretical result to provide computational evidence that the classical model of convective mixing in porous media exhibits, in the regime of high Rayleigh number, a dissolution flux that is constant and independent of the Rayleigh number. Our findings support the universal character of convective mixing and point to the need for alternative explanations for nonlinear scalings of the dissolution flux with the Rayleigh number, recently observed experimentally. |
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