Displacement flows under elastic membranes. Part 1. Experiments and direct numerical simulations

Abstract

The injection of fluid into the narrow liquid-filled gap between a rigid plate and an elastic membrane drives a displacement flow that is controlled by the competition between elastic and viscous forces. We study such flows using the canonical set-up of an elastic-walled Hele-Shaw cell whose upper boundary is formed by an elastic sheet. We investigate both single- and two-phase displacement flows in which the localised injection of fluid at a constant flow rate is accommodated by the inflation of the sheet and the outward propagation of an axisymmetric front beyond which the cell remains approximately undeformed. We perform a direct comparison between quantitative experiments and numerical simulations of two theoretical models. The models couple the Föppl–von Kármán equations, which describe the deformation of the thin elastic membrane, to the equations describing the flow, which we model by (i) the Navier–Stokes equations or (ii) lubrication theory. We identify the dominant physical effects that control the behaviour of the system and critically assess modelling assumptions that were made in previous studies. The insight gained from these studies is then used in Part 2 of this work, where we formulate an improved lubrication model and develop an asymptotic description of the key phenomena.