Eur. Phys. J. B 49, 109-118 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00019-y

Two-phase flow in porous media: dynamical phase transition

¹ Department of Physics, University of Oslo, PB 1048 Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway
² Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

Corresponding authors: ^a h.a.knudsen@fys.uio.no - ^b alex.hansen@phys.ntnu.no

Received: 7 February 2005
Revised: 2 November 2005
Published online: 31 January 2006

Abstract

We study numerically the behavior of two-phase flow in porous media via the parameters capillary number and viscosity ratio, under steady-state conditions and various levels of saturation. We construct a phase diagram, where the phases are defined according to whether one or both fluids move. We establish a semi-empirical theory for the location of the phase boundaries. The steady-state conditions are obtained by implementing biperiodic boundary conditions.