Magnetic resonance imaging of convection in porous media
- Duke Univ., Durham, NC (United States)
- Duke Univ. Medical Center, Durham, NC (United States)
- Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States)
We describe convection patterns formed in porous media fully saturated with water. The flows are noninvasively visualized by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Ordered and disordered packings of acrylic spheres of diameter d = 3.2 mm, form the porous media studied here. The horizontal cross sections of the convection layers are circular, rectangular and hexagonal. If there are inhomogeneities in the packing, convection begins first in the resulting regions of high permeability. These regions occur throughout the randomly-packed medium at defects, as well as at the edges. Even well above onset, packing defects remain as pinning sites for the pattern. Grain boundaries occur at the walls for all sphere packings, and lead to two convective onsets. Convection occurs first for the narrow higher permeability wall region, and is characterized by larger wave-number rolls. Convection occurs at higher Rayleigh numbers, Ra, for the lower permeability interior region and is characterized by smaller wave number rolls. The sidewalls appear to play a weak role in the interior pattern selection. In the ordered media, we see steady-state rolls up to 5Ra{sub c} where Ra{sub c} is the critical Rayleigh number. Above 5Ra{sub c}, time dependent behavior begins. As Ra increases above Ra{sub c}, there is an increasing asymmetry between the area of the up flows and of the down flows. By Ra = 8Ra{sub c}, the up flows consist of smaller mobile islands in a sea of down flows. The equations which describe PMC predict a rapid decay of vertical vorticity. In Rayleigh-Benard convection (RBC) vertical vorticity is responsible for mean flows which lead to complex time dependent flows such as spiral chaos, even relatively near Ra{sub c}. We find rapid relaxation to steady states (stable over at least 100 vertical diffusion times) within the stability region, which is in agreement with the expectation of no vertical vorticity.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab., IL (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG05-90ER14141
- OSTI ID:
- 102991
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9404137--; ON: DE94017694; CNN: Grant PHI RR05959; Grant CDR-8622201
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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