Miscible density fingering of chemical fronts in porous media: Nonlinear simulations

Abstract

Nonlinear interactions between chemical reactions and Rayleigh–Taylor type density fingering are studied in porous media or thin Hele-Shaw cells by direct numerical simulations of Darcy’s law coupled to the evolution equation for the concentration of a chemically reacting solute controlling the density of miscible solutions. In absence of flow, the reaction-diffusion system features stable planar fronts traveling with a given constant speed v and width w. When the reactant and product solutions have different densities, such fronts are buoyantly unstable if the heavier solution lies on top of the lighter one in the gravity field. Density fingering is then observed. We study the nonlinear dynamics of such fingering for a given model chemical system, the iodate-arsenious acid reaction. Chemical reactions profoundly affect the density fingering leading to changes in the characteristic wavelength of the pattern at early time and more rapid coarsening in the nonlinear regime. The nonlinear dynamics of the system is studied as a function of the three relevant parameters of the model, i.e., the dimensionless width of the system expressed as a Rayleigh number Ra, the Damköhler number Da, and a chemical parameter d which is a function of kinetic constants and chemical concentration, these two last parameters controlling the speed v and width w of the stable planar front. For small Ra, the asymptotic nonlinear dynamics of the fingering in the presence of chemical reactions is one single finger of stationary shape traveling with constant nonlinear speed V>v and mixing zone W>w. This is drastically different from pure density fingering for which fingers elongate monotonically in time. The asymptotic finger has axial and transverse averaged profiles that are self-similar in unit lengths scaled by Ra. Moreover, we find that W/Ra scales as Da−0.5. For larger Ra, tip splittings are observed.