Forced imbibition through model porous media

A number of industrial and natural process ultimately rely on two-phase flow in heterogeneous media. One of the most prominent example is oil recovery which has driven fundamental and applied research in this field for decades. Imbibition occurs when a wetting fluid displaces an immiscible fluid e.g. in a porous media. Using model microfluidic experiment we control both the geometry and wetting properties of the heterogenous media, and show that the typical front propagation picture fails when imbibition is forced and the displacing fluid is less viscous than the non-wetting fluid. We identify and quantitatively characterize four different flow regimes at the pore scale yielding markedly different imbibition patterns at large scales. In particular we will discuss the transition from a conventional 2D-front propagation scenario to a regime where the meniscus dynamics is an intrinsically 3D process.