Migration of air channels: An instability of air flow in mobile saturated porous media

A set of two-dimensional laboratory visualization experiments reveals a previously unrecognized gas-flow instability in a porous medium saturated with a glycerine–water solution. The medium is a non-fixed vertically placed packing of grains of crushed fused silica glass. The interaction of the injected air flow and the medium structure leads to mobilization of the medium and an instability, which causes the air channel to migrate. This instability is dominated by a dimensionless number αα, which can be interpreted as a normalization of a critical velocity with a dipole velocity for saturated conditions. The channel migration appears as a sequence of previous channels collapsing and new channels opening. The channel migration comes to a stop after some time, leaving one thin and stable channel. The process is studied by calculating the cumulated lateral movement distance of a channel and the lateral width of the area affected by the migration, both scaled by αα with an empirical power of 0.25. Another dimensionless number f is defined to qualify the migration under different grain size, height of bed, and air flow rate.