DOI: 10.1051/jp1:1994187
J. Phys. I France 4 (1994) 1269-1274

Short Communication

No viscous fingers in heterogeneous porous media

Muhammad Sahimi^{1, 2} and Mark A. Knackstedt<sup>2, 3

1</sup>  Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1211
²  HLRZ Supercomputer Center, c/o KFA Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany
³  Department of Applied Mathematics, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra 2601, Australia

(Received 11 July 1994, accepted 13 July 1994)

Abstract
We have carried out computer simulation of miscible displacements in porous media in which the permeabilities vary spatially according to a fractional Brownian motion. This distribution induces long-range correlations and bas been found to describe the permeabilities of heterogeneous rocks. Our simulation shows that conventional viscous fingers, which are the result of the contrant M between the viscosities of the displacing and displaced fluids, and are usually found in laboratory experiments, do not exist. Displacement patterns and efficiency are controlled by the heterogeneities, and the viscosity contrast M, varied here between 1 and , han essentially no effect.

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