Domain growth, wetting, and scaling in porous media.

The lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is used to study the kinetics of domain growth of a binary fluid in a number of geometries modeling porous media. Unlike the traditional methods which solve the Cahn-Hilliard equation, the LB method correctly simulates fluid properties, phase segregation, interface dynamics and wetting. Our results, based on lattice sizes of up to 4096× 4096, do not show evidence to indicate the breakdown of late stage dynamical scaling, and suggest that confinement of the fluid is the key to the slow kinetics observed. Randomness of the pore structure appears unnecessary. Department of Mathematics, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523 Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A5B7 CANADA