Dissolution fingers (or wormholes) are formed during the dissolution of a porous rock as a result of nonlinear feedbacks between the flow, transport and chemical reactions at pore surfaces. We analyze the shapes and growth velocities of such fingers
within the thin-front approximation, in which the reaction is assumed to take place instantaneously with the reactants fully consumed at the dissolution front. We concentrate on the case when the main flow is driven by the constant pressure gradient far from the finger, and the permeability contrast between the inside and the outside of the finger is finite. Using Ivantsov ansatz and conformal transformations we find the family of steadily translating fingers characterized by a parabolic shape. We derive the reactant concentration field and the pressure field inside and outside of the fingers and show that the flow within them is uniform. The advancement velocity of the finger is shown to be inversely proportional to its radius of curvature in the small P{e}clet number limit and constant for large P{e}clet numbers.
The reactive-infiltration instability, which develops when a porous matrix is dissolved by a flowing fluid, contains two important length scales. Here we outline a linear stability analysis that simultaneously incorporates both scales. We show that t
he commonly used thin-front model is a limiting case of a more general theory, which also includes convection-dominated dissolution as another special case. The wavelength of the instability is bounded from below, and lies in the range 1mm to 1km for physically reasonable flow rates and reaction rates. We obtain a closed form for the growth rate when the change in porosity is small.
We investigate the chemical dissolution of porous media using a network model in which the system is represented as a series of interconnected pipes with the diameter of each segment increasing in proportion to the local reactant consumption. Moreove
r, the topology of the network is allowed to change dynamically during the simulation: as the diameters of the eroding pores become comparable with the interpore distances, the pores are joined together thus changing the interconnections within the network. With this model, we investigate different growth regimes in an evolving porous medium, identifying the mechanisms responsible for the emergence of specific patterns. We consider both the random and regular network and study the effect of the network geometry on the patterns. Finally, we consider practically important problem of finding an optimum flow rate that gives a maximum increase in permeability for a given amount of reactant.
A reactive fluid dissolving the surface of a uniform fracture will trigger an instability in the dissolution front, leading to spontaneous formation of pronounced well-spaced channels in the surrounding rock matrix. Although the underlying mechanism
is similar to the wormhole instability in porous rocks there are significant differences in the physics, due to the absence of a steadily propagating reaction front. In previous work we have described the geophysical implications of this instability in regard to the formation of long conduits in soluble rocks. Here we describe a more general linear stability analysis, including axial diffusion, transport limited dissolution, non-linear kinetics, and a finite length system.
We use an analytic criterion for vanishing of exponential damping of correlations developed previously (Piasecki et al, J. Chem. Phys., 133, 164507, 2010) to determine the threshold volume fractions for structural transitions in hard sphere systems i
n dimensions D=3,4,5 and 6, proceeding from the YBG hierarchy and using the Kirkwood superposition approximation. We conclude that the theory does predict phase transitions in qualitative agreement with numerical studies. We also derive, within the superposition approximation, the asymptotic form of the analytic condition for occurence of a structural transition in the D->Infinity limit .
A reactive fluid dissolving the surrounding rock matrix can trigger an instability in the dissolution front, leading to spontaneous formation of pronounced channels or wormholes. Theoretical investigations of this instability have typically focused o
n a steadily propagating dissolution front that separates regions of high and low porosity. In this paper we show that this is not the only possible dissolutional instability in porous rocks; there is another instability that operates instantaneously on any initial porosity field, including an entirely uniform one. The relative importance of the two mechanisms depends on the ratio of the porosity increase to the initial porosity. We show that the inlet instability is likely to be important in limestone formations where the initial porosity is small and there is the possibility of a large increase in permeability. In quartz-rich sandstones, where the proportion of easily soluble material (e.g. carbonate cements) is small, the instability in the steady-state equations is dominant.
The solutional origin of limestone caves was recognized over a century ago, but the short penetration length of an undersaturated solution made it seem impossible for long conduits to develop. This is contradicted by field observations, where extende
d conduits, sometimes several kilometers long, are found in karst environments. However, a sharp drop in the dissolution rate of CaCO_3 near saturation provides a mechanism for much deeper penetration of reactant. The notion of a kinetic trigger - a sudden change in rate constant over a narrow concentration range - has become a widely accepted paradigm in speleogenesis modeling. However, it is based on one-dimensional models for the fluid and solute transport inside the fracture, assuming that the dissolution front is planar in the direction perpendicular to the flow. Here we show that this assumption is incorrect; a planar dissolution front in an entirely uniform fracture is unstable to infinitesimal perturbations and inevitably breaks up into highly localized regions of dissolution. This provides an alternative mechanism for cave formation, even in the absence of a kinetic trigger. Our results suggest that there is an inherent wavelength to the erosion pattern in dissolving fractures, which depends on the reaction rate and flow rate, but is independent of the initial roughness. In contrast to one-dimensional models, two-dimensional simulations indicate that there is only a weak dependence of the breakthrough time on kinetic order; localization of the flow tends to keep the undersaturation in the dissolution front above the threshold for non-linear kinetics.
We perform theoretical studies of stretching of 20 proteins with knots within a coarse grained model. The knots ends are found to jump to well defined sequential locations that are associated with sharp turns whereas in homopolymers they diffuse arou
nd and eventually slide off. The waiting times of the jumps are increasingly stochastic as the temperature is raised. Larger knots do not return to their native locations when a protein is released after stretching.
