Transport and instabilities of complex fluids in porous media

Porous medium is a material with many voids filled by liquid or air.

Liquids flow through porous media is crucial for natural and industrial processes: medical filtration such as face masks (where mucus is an elastoviscoplastic fluid), cleaning of contaminated surfaces, recovery of groundwater, oil and materials in geologically challenging locations, CO2 sequestration for climate change, pharmaceutical technologies and human body tissues.

In these flows, visco-elastic/plastic fluids may occur naturally (mud, biological liquids), or added to enhance the process (polymers in georecovery).

These complex fluids flow in a very different way to Newtonian fluids such as water, and there is an urgent need for improved theories and models.

Transport in porous media is dramatically affected by flow instabilities in microscale, improving mixing and propagation; hence, there is an urgent need to understand and control them. Yet, instabilities involving complex fluids remain a challenge.

This proposal will result in completely new understanding of complex fluids flow through porous media by fluid flow simulations which were impossible until now, using high-fidelity computation methods recently developed by the applicant.

We aim to: i) reveal unique new insight of the transport and instabilities of complex fluids through porous media, and ii) develop novel analysis tools, and couplings between micro- and macrostructure, to enable controlled design of complex fluids processes in the future.