The gradient flow structure for incompressible immiscible two-phase flows in porous media (Q5965050)

This note focuses on the widely used model governing the motion of an incompressible immiscible two-phase flow in a possibly heterogeneous porous medium. This model is relevant, for instance, for describing the flow of oil and water within a rock that is possibly made of several rock types. The authors show that this model can be reinterpreted as the gradient flow of some singular energy. Starting from this energy together with a dissipation potential, the celebrated Darcy-Muskat law and the capillary pressure law governing the flow thanks to the steepest descent condition for the energy can be recovered. The authors' interpretation does not require the introduction of any algebraic transformation like, e.g., the global pressure or the Kirchhoff transform, and can be transposed to the case of more phases.