Speaker
Description
Mixing and reaction in porous and fractured media are commonly assumed to occur under slow, viscosity-dominated flow conditions where fluid inertia is negligible and pore-scale transport is governed by viscosity-dominated advection with weak transverse mixing. In this presentation, we show that this assumption breaks down even at weak inertial levels, well before any transition to turbulence. Even under laminar conditions, weak inertia triggers 3D vortices, braided streamline paths, and symmetry-breaking flow topologies that remove transport barriers and produce global chaotic advection. These inertial flow structures lead to non-monotonic mixing behavior, dramatic increases in transverse dispersion, and localized hotspots of reaction and mineral precipitation that reshape permeability from the pore scale to the network scale. Together, these results establish weak fluid inertia as a governing and tunable control parameter for mixing and reaction in porous media, revealing new opportunities to manipulate reactive transport in geologic and engineered systems.
| Country | United States |
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