Quasi-static filling of a disordered nanoporous medium with a non-wetting liquid as a process of self-organized criticality

Abstract

The paper shows that the quasi-static process of filling a nanoporous medium with a non-wetting liquid is a process of self-organized criticality. In the system, there are distributed stepwise noncorrelated avalanches, separated both in space and time. In addition, it is shown that in the vicinity of the critical point (the threshold pressure of the filling) and above it the “avalanche” clusters of all possible sizes arise. The revealed mechanism allows to pass further to consideration of anomalously slow relaxation as the SOC process and to understanding of uniform internal mechanisms underlying the observed phenomena in such systems.