FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF PETROLEUM AND GAS ENGINEERING

PGE 318: FLUID FLOW THROUGH POROUS MEDIUM

VISCOUS FINGERING

ASSIGNMENT 2

NAME: THERESA MAKAMA NJANG-INYANG

STUDENT ID: 201205041
LEVEL: 300
ACADEMIC YEAR: 2022/2023 ACADEMIC SESSION
DATE: 17TH MAY, 2023
 VISCOUS FINGERING
Viscous fingering is a manifestation of a finger-shaped interface between displaced and
displacing fluids occurring during typical miscible displacement projects for oil recovery. Its
cause may be traced to the instability of a viscous fluid being displaced by a more mobile
fluid. It is a condition whereby the interface of two fluids, such as oil and water, bypasses
sections of reservoir as it moves along, creating an uneven, or fingered, profile.
The Saffman–Taylor instability, also known as viscous fingering, is the formation of patterns
in a morphologically unstable interface between two fluids in a porous medium. Fingering is
a relatively common condition in reservoirs with water-injection wells. The result of
fingering is an inefficient sweeping action that can bypass significant volumes of recoverable
oil and, in severe cases, an early breakthrough of water into adjacent production wellbores.

Figure 1: Viscous fingering of immiscible gas and oil

In viscous fingering, where a less viscous fluid, such as air, pushes a more viscous fluid, such
as an oil, in thin rectangular cells (known as Hele-Shaw cells), surface tension plays an
important role in determining the shape and properties of the fingers. It is the unstable
displacement of a more viscous fluid by a less viscous fluid. The fingering of an injection
fluid into an in-situ fluid can influence reservoir flow behaviour and adversely impact
recovery. It is important to note, however, that fingering occurs even in the absence of a
porous medium. If a low-viscosity fluid is injected into a cell containing a high-viscosity
fluid, the low-viscosity fluid will begin to form fingers as it moves through the fluid. It will
not uniformly displace the higher viscosity fluid.
This situation is most often encountered during drainage processes through media such as
soils. It occurs when a less viscous fluid is injected, displacing a more viscous fluid; in the
inverse situation, with the more viscous displacing the other, the interface is stable and no
instability is seen. Essentially the same effect occurs driven by gravity (without injection) if
the interface is horizontal and separates two fluids of different densities, the heavier one
being above the other: this is known as the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
Viscous fingering takes on important significance in the miscible slug process where it may
be a dominant factor in determining minimum slug size. Experimental and theoretical studies
of viscous fingering have been made by other investigators. However, an exhaustive study of
the variables affecting viscous fingering had not been made. The present study was
undertaken in an effort to determine the effects of some of the more obvious variables-such as

1
mobility ratio, displacement velocity, distance displaced, and packing-upon viscous finger
length and growth in a small laboratory model. It does not necessarily follow that conclusions
reached by studying the results of this model study may be applied to the field. Future studies
would have to evaluate the effect of model size on extension of these results.
Most experimental research on viscous fingering has been performed on Hele-Shaw cells,
which consist of two closely spaced, parallel sheets of glass containing a viscous fluid. The
two most common set-ups are the channel configuration, in which the less viscous fluid is
injected at one end of the channel, and the radial configuration, in which the less viscous fluid
is injected at the centre of the cell. Instabilities analogous to viscous fingering can also be
self-generated in biological systems
Fingering can be a reservoir heterogeneity problem or a fluid displacement problem. Most
reservoir simulators do not accurately model fingering effects. It is possible to improve model
accuracy by using a very fine grid to cover the area of interest, but the benefits associated
with such a fine grid are seldom sufficient to justify the additional cost.
The most mysterious aspect observed by Saffman and Taylor is that the limiting width of the
fingers obtained at high velocities is very close to half the channel width. This property was
not explained until the 1980s, although Saffman and Taylor did calculate the shape of the
finger they obtained in their experiments.

2
 REFERENCES
Benham A. L., Olson R. W. (1963). A Model Study of Viscous Fingering. OnePetro.
Retrieved from:
https://onepetro.org/spejournal/article/3/02/138/160563/A-Model-Study-of-Viscous-
Fingering
R. F. (2018). Fluid Properties and Model Initialization. Science Direct.
Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/viscous-fingering
(2023). Saffman–Taylor instability. Wikipedia.
Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffman%E2%80%93Taylor_instability
(2020). Viscous fingering. Encyclopedia of Mathematics.
Retrieved from:
http://encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Viscous_fingering&oldid=50609