Pattern formation in poroelastic systems

Poroelastic effects, where fluid flow through a porous solid is coupled to elastic deformation of the solid, play an important role in many natural and engineering systems. Due to the highly nonlinear nature of the fluid-solid coupling in these systems, instability-driven pattern formation is both likely and very poorly understood. Here, we use laboratory experiments to explore pattern formation in a model poroelastic system. We study the paradigmatic problem of fluid injection into a quasi-two-dimensional porous medium, and we show that poroelasticity results in a nonlocal coupling between the fluid and the solid that drives pattern formation in even relatively simple fluid flows.