Viscous fingering with a single fluid

Abstract

We study fingering that occurs when hot glycerine displaces cooler, more viscous glycerine in a radial Hele-Shaw cell. We find that fingering occurs for a sufficiently large initial viscosity contrast and for sufficiently high flow rates of the displacing fluid. The wavelength of the fingering instability is proportional to the cell width for thin cells, but the ratio of wavelength to cell width decreases for our thickest cell. Similar fingering is seen in numerical simulations of this system.PACS Nos.: 47.54.+r, 68.15.+e, 47.20.–k