Thu, 22 Jan 2015
16:00 -
17:00
L3
Fingers and Flowers: Flow, transport, and deformation in porous materials
Chris MacMinn
(Oxford Engineering)
Abstract
Coupling across scales is often particularly strong in porous rocks,
soils, and sediments, where small-scale physical mechanisms such as
capillarity, erosion, and reaction can play an important role in
phenomena at much larger scales. Here, I will present two striking
examples of this coupling: (1) carbon sequestration, where storage
security relies on the action of millimeter-scale trapping mechanisms
to immobilise kilometer-scale plumes of buoyant carbon dioxide in the
subsurface, and (2) fluid injection into a granular solid, where
macroscopic poromechanics drive grain-scale deformation and failure.
I will show how we derive physical insight into the behaviour of these
complex systems with an effective combination of theoretical models,
numerical simulations, and laboratory experiments.