Evaluation of hydrodynamic scaling in porous media using finger dimensions

Abstract. The use of dimensionless caling is ubiquitous to hydrodynamic analysis, providing a powerful method of extending limited experimetnal results and generalizing theories. Miller and Miller [1956] contributed a scaling framework for immiscible fluid flow through porous media that relied on consistency of the contact angle between systems to be compared. It is common to assume that the effective contact angle will be zero in clean sand material where water is the wetting liquid. The well-documented unstable wetting process of fingered flow is used here as a diagnostic tool for the scaling relationships for infiltration into sandy media. Through comparison of finger cross sections produced using three liquids as well as various concentrations of anionic surfactant, it is shown that the zero contact angle assumption is very poor even for laboratory cleaned silica sand: Experimental results demonstrate ffective contact angles approaching 60 ø. Scaling was effective for a given liquid between sands of differing particle size. These results suggest that caution should be exercised when applying scaling theory to initial wetting of porous media by liquids of differing gas-liquid interfacial tensions. 1