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Dissolution finger growth in variable aperture fractures: Role of the tip‐region flow field
Author(s) -
Cheung Wendy,
Rajaram Harihar
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2002gl015196
Subject(s) - monotonic function , aperture (computer memory) , fracture (geology) , flow (mathematics) , dissolution , computation , materials science , geometry , optics , mathematics , physics , mathematical analysis , chemistry , acoustics , composite material , algorithm
We present high‐resolution computations to demonstrate the influence of the tip‐region flow field on dissolution finger morphology in variable aperture fractures. Linear fingers are observed for small values (<0.1) of the coefficient of variation of the aperture field, whereas for larger values, fingers exhibit significant branching and winding. A consequence of this behavior is that finger breakthrough times vary non‐monotonically with the coefficient of variation of the aperture field. This non‐monotonicity is a robust feature across almost all realizations for in‐plane fracture dimensions > about 25 × 25 correlation lengths.