Dynamics of ganglia in a porous medium

The study of liquid ganglia trapped in a porous medium is one of the key topics in both energy-related research, where the aim is to flush out the ganglia of unrecovered oil, and in the environmental research, where they aim is to ensure that the carbon dioxide is trapped in the porous store for a long time. From the purely research perspective this is an area at the intersection of fluid and solid mechanics, mechanics of multiphase media, free-boundary problems and advanced computational fluid dynamics. The first question that arises in this area is how does the interface between two fluid move across a porous structure? This interface is not an ordinary ’free surface’ one comes across in fluid mechanics; it is made of individual menisci propagating in a porous network and one sees an ’interface’ only on a length scale large compared with the pore sizes. Why does it happen that in some systems this interface exhibits totally different regimes of motion? When will a ganglion (i.e. blob of fluid) trapped in a porous matrix be moved by the external flow? When will it break up into smaller ganglia and how does this happen? Do such ganglia coalesce? These and many other questions related to the ganglia phenomenon remain open and the proposed project will aim at addressing some of them.

Funding details.
This research project is one of a number of projects at this institution. It is in competition for funding with one or more of these projects. Usually the project which receives the best applicant will be awarded the funding. The funding is only available to UK citizens or those who have been resident in the UK for a period of 3 years or more.

Non-UK Students: If you have the correct qualifications and access to your own funding, either from your home country or your own finances, your application to work on this project will be considered.