Pattern formation of freezing infiltration in porous media

Abstract

Gravity-driven infiltration of liquid water into unsaturated porous media can be a spatially heterogeneous process due to the gravity fingering instability. When such infiltration occurs in a subfreezing porous medium, liquid water can readily freeze, leading to both the removal of liquid water available for transport and a reduction in local permeability. As a result of the coupling between gravity fingering and freezing, macroscopic frozen structures can form that record the shape and history of the wetting front. These structures have been observed in the field in terrestrial snowpack and glacial firn layers and are believed to have profound impacts on how liquid water and its accompanying thermal content distribute during infiltration. However, a more detailed physics-based understanding of freezing infiltration has been missing. In this work, we use a thermodynamic nonequilibrium infiltration model to investigate the emergence of refrozen structures during water infiltration into an initially homogeneous and subfreezing porous medium. From scaling analysis, we recover the relevant nondimensional groups that govern the physics of the freezing infiltration process. We identify two key mechanisms caused by freezing that reduce the effective infiltration rate, calculated as the maximum depth of infiltration per elapsed time. In the first mechanism, the effective infiltrate rate decreases because a portion of the liquid water is consumed due to freezing, and such an effect can be well quantified by the freezing Damköhler number. For the second mechanism, we report on a new phenomenon termed secondary fingering, where new flow paths are established in between the primary infiltration channels. We find that secondary fingering reduces the degree of flow channelization and thus weakens the effective rate of infiltration via flow field homogenization. Finally, we identify a regime under high Damköhler number in which freezing-induced permeability reduction completely clogs flow.

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