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The characteristic of two-phase immiscible flow in porous media is controlled by different kinds of force, such as interface surface tension (capillary force) and fluid viscosity (viscous force). Based on those two forces, three typical displace-ment patterns in porous media are divided, named as capillary fingering, viscous fingering and stable displacement. However, the impact of inertial force in displacement pattern, which generate due to the flow direction or velocity change of fluid, is always neglected. This research used direct numerical simulation (DNS) to study the two-phase immiscible pattern with a wide range of capillary number (Ca) and ratio of Reynolds number (Re). The Ca is a dimensionless value which represents the ratio of viscous force and capillary force. While Re represents the ratio of inertial force and viscous force. The impact of forces on displacement patterns were determined based on the quantitative analyses of the saturation distribution as functions of Ca and Re. The result shows that inertial effects have minimal influence on flow conditions at low capillary numbers. However, at high capillary numbers, capillary forces become less significant, and inertial effects strongly influence flow conditions. These findings contribute the different insight of fluid displacement patterns, controlled by balance of inertial, capillary and viscous forces, has a noticeable influence on recovery or storage efficiency in subsurface process.
Wang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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