On shear thinning fluid flow induced by continuous mass injection in porous media with variable conductivity

•A novel self-similar solution is derived in closed form for generalized geometry.•Permeability variations along the direction of propagation are considered.•Constraints placed by assumptions on problem parameters are examined.•An application to subsurface remediation is presented.•Permeability variations and uncertainty in fluid parameters mostly affect results.

A new formulation is proposed to examine the propagation of the pressure disturbance induced by the injection of a time-variable mass of a weakly compressible shear thinning fluid in a porous domain with generalized geometry (plane, radial, or spherical). Medium heterogeneity along the flow direction is conceptualized as a monotonic power-law permeability variation. The resulting nonlinear differential problem admits a similarity solution in dimensionless form which provides the velocity of the pressure front and describes the pressure field within the domain as a function of geometry, fluid flow behavior index, injection rate, and exponent of the permeability variation. The problem has a closed-form solution for an instantaneous injection, generalizing earlier results for constant permeability. A parameter-dependent upper bound to the permeability increase in the flow direction needs to be imposed for the expression of the front velocity to retain its physical meaning. An example application to the radial injection of a remediation agent in a subsurface environment demonstrates the impact of permeability spatial variations and of their interplay with uncertainties in flow behavior index on model predictions.