Anomalous dispersion in a dipole flow geometry

Abstract

The dispersion of a passive tracer in fluid flowing between a source and a sink in a Hele–Shaw geometry, characteristic of field scale flows in a layer or fracture, is considered. A combination of analytic and numerical techniques and complementary experimental measurements are employed, leading to a consistent picture. This dispersion process is found to be characterized by a power-law decay in time of the tracer concentration, with an exponential cutoff at very long times, in strong contrast to the Gaussian behavior associated with the widely used quasi-one-dimensional (1-D) models.