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Acoustic flow in porous media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2021

Ofer Manor*
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
*
Email address for correspondence: manoro@technion.ac.il

Abstract

We calculate the steady acoustic flow – the steady drift of fluid mass or acoustic streaming appearing along the path of an acoustic stimulus – in porous media. In particular, we suggest a mechanism to explain acoustic contributions to mass transport in porous media at geological, unit operation and lab-on-a-chip length scales. We study several cases of steady acoustic flow for a planar acoustic wave whose wavelength is large compared with the pore size. We commence our analysis at the ideal limit of same acoustic properties in the solid and fluid. The effective flow may then be treated intuitively according to the Darcy equation for flow through porous media in addition to a correction for the average azimuth of the pores compared with the acoustic path. We further consider the framework of a rigid porous frame, where the presence of a flow forcing mechanism resulting from the viscous dissipation of the acoustic wave at the solid surface of the pores hinders the intuitive application of the Darcy equation. However, we show that the steady acoustic flow in this case may be written as a quasi-Darcy-type equation. The analysis is conducted by a detailed calculation of the transport of mass through cylindrical pores of similar size but arbitrary azimuth compared with the acoustic path. We consider large, medium and small pore diameter limits relative to the viscous penetration length of the acoustic wave near the pore surface.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. An illustration of a porous medium that is comprised of an array of cylindrical pores, where (a) pore number $n$, of diameter $D_p$, is oriented so that its axial axis, $z_n$, and its axial flow component, $u_n$, are at an angle, $\theta _n$, with respect to the path of the acoustic wave, $x$; the pores in the solid medium may be (b) aligned along the path of the acoustic wave, (c) aligned along a path different to the acoustic wave or (d) randomly aligned, among other options.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Spatial variations of the velocity field, given by the scaled streamfunction $\psi _0/\delta U\cos (\theta _n)$ along the axial and radial coordinates $kx$ and $y/\delta$, respectively, where we ignore wave attenuation ($\alpha _n=0$) and time, define the surface of the pore at $y=0$ and represent the different properties using dimensional notation. We use arrows to give the path of the velocity field and colours to indicate the relative flow velocity, which is quantified in the colour legend to the right.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Spatial variations of the dimensional axial drift velocity, $u_n$, along pore $n$ for different values of the effective wave attenuation coefficient along the pore $\alpha _n$, where $u_c\equiv {St}^{-1}\cos ^2(\theta _n) \, \textrm {e}^{-2 \alpha _n z_n} U$ and where we represent the different properties using dimensional notation. The acoustic streaming far from the solid, $u_{d,n}=u_n(y/\delta \gg 1)$, flows along the path of the wave and increases in magnitude with the attenuation coefficient, $\alpha _n$, although the acoustic flow may change direction near the solid surface when $\alpha _n k>1$.

Figure 3

Figure 4. Spatial variations of the velocity field, given by the streamfunction $\psi _0/\delta ^2 U\cos (\theta _n)$, along the axial and radial coordinates $kz_n$ and $r/\delta$, respectively, where we ignore wave attenuation ($\alpha _n=0$) and time, define the positions of the centre and surface of the pore at $r=0$ and $\delta /2$, respectively, and represent the different properties using dimensional notation. We further use arrows to give the path of the velocity field and colours to indicate the relative flow intensity, which is quantified in the colour legend to the right.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Radial ($r$) variations of the dimensional axial drift velocity, $u_n$, along pore $n$ for different values of the effective wave attenuation coefficient along the pore, where we use dimensional notation and $u_c\equiv {St}^{-1}\cos ^2(\theta _n) \, \textrm {e}^{-2 \alpha _n z_n} U$$\alpha _n$.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Scaled pore size, $D_p/\delta$, variations of the scaled steady acoustic flow, $\mathcal {U}/U\zeta {St}^{-1}\, \textrm {e}^{-2\alpha x}$, in rigid porous media of randomly distributed pore azimuths with respect to the acoustic path ($m=3, m'=4$) for the cases of small pores in (3.31) (dashed black line), medium to small pores in (3.30) (dashed blue line) for $\alpha \delta =0, 0.5, 1$ and large pores (red solid lines) in (3.15) for $\alpha /k=0, 0.01, 0.1, 0.5, 1$, where (b) is an inset of panel (a) for small pore sizes and where (3.31) is applicable for $D_p/\delta \ll 1$, (3.30) is applicable for $D_p/\delta <2$ and (3.15) is applicable for $D_p/\delta \gg 1$.