Immiscible Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media: Effective Rheology in the Continuum Limit

We consider steady-state immiscible and incompressible two-phase flow in porous media. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a flow regime where the volumetric flow rate depends on the pressure gradient as a power law with an exponent larger than one. This occurs when the capillary forces and viscous forces compete. At higher flow rates, where the viscous forces dominate, the volumetric flow rate depends linearly on the pressure gradient. This means that there is a crossover pressure gradient that separates these two flow regimes. At small enough pressure gradient, the capillary forces dominate. If one or both of the immiscible fluids percolate, the volumetric flow rate will then depend linearly on the pressure gradient as the interfaces will not move. If none of the fluids percolate, there will be a minimum pressure gradient threshold to mobilize the interfaces and thereby get the fluids moving. We now imagine a core sample of a given size. The question we pose is what happens to the crossover pressure gradient that separates the power-law regime from the high-flow rate linear regime and the threshold pressure gradient that blocks the flow at low pressure gradients when the size of the core sample is increased. Based on analytical calculations using the capillary bundle model and on numerical simulations using a dynamical pore-network model, we find that the crossover pressure gradient and the threshold pressure gradient decrease with two distinct power laws in the size. This means that the power-law regime disappears in the continuum limit where the pores are infinitely small compared to the sample size.