Gravity‐destabilized nonwetting phase invasion in macroheterogeneous porous media: Experimental observations of invasion dynamics and scale analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We designed and conducted experiments in a heterogeneous sand pack where gravity‐destabilized nonwetting phase invasion (CO2 and trichloroethylene) could be recorded using high‐resolution light transmission methods. The heterogeneity structure was designed to be reminiscent of fluvial channel lag cut‐and‐fill architecture and to contain a series of capillary barriers. As invasion progressed, nonwetting phase structure developed a series of fingers and pools; behind the growing front we found nonwetting phase saturation to pulsate in certain regions when viscous forces were low. Through a scale analysis we derive a series of length scales that describe finger diameter, pool height and width, and regions where pulsation occurs within a heterogeneous porous medium. In all cases we find that the intrinsic pore‐scale nature of the invasion process and resulting structure must be incorporated into our analysis to explain experimental results. We propose a simple macroscale structural growth model that assembles length scales for substructures to delineate nonwetting phase migration from a source into a heterogeneous domain. For such a model applied at the field scale for dense nonaqueous phase liquid migration, we expect capillary and gravity forces within the complex subsurface lithology to play the primary roles with viscous forces forming a perturbation on the inviscid phase structure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".