1.
Phys Rev Lett
; 112(12): 128303, 2014 Mar 28.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24724684
ABSTRACT
We study the fingering instability of the interface between two miscible fluids, a colloidal suspension and its own solvent. The temporal evolution of the interface in a Hele-Shaw cell is found to be governed by the competition between the nonlinear viscosity of the suspension and an off-equilibrium, effective surface tension Γe. By studying suspensions in a wide range of volume fractions, ΦC, we show that Γeâ¼ΦC2, in agreement with Korteweg's theory for miscible fluids. The surface tension exhibits an anomalous increase with particle size, which we account for using entropy arguments.