Avalanches and non-Gaussian fluctuations of the global velocity of imbibition fronts

We present an experimental study of the global velocity V(t) of a viscous fluid interface during forced-flow imbibition in a disordered medium. Our high resolution setup shows that the fronts display an intermittent behavior signature of a burstlike dynamics, with power-law distributed avalanches. W...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 102; no. 9; p. 094502
Main Authors Planet, Ramon, Santucci, Stéphane, Ortín, Jordi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 06.03.2009
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:We present an experimental study of the global velocity V(t) of a viscous fluid interface during forced-flow imbibition in a disordered medium. Our high resolution setup shows that the fronts display an intermittent behavior signature of a burstlike dynamics, with power-law distributed avalanches. When measured at scales comparable to the correlation length, velocity fluctuations follow an asymmetric non-Gaussian distribution, whose skewness increases with decreasing measuring window and/or injection flow rate, offering the effective number of degrees of freedom probed in our experiment.
ISSN:0031-9007
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.102.094502