On the selection of Saffman-Taylor viscous fingers for divergent flow in a wedge (Q6548966)

Saffman and Taylor observed that the width of the finger appearing in the displacement by a less viscous fluid in a Hele-Shaw cell is near \(1/2\), when the non-dimensional surface-tension is near zero. However, recent results shaw that there exist infinite number of possible fingers with width contained in the segment \((0,1)\). The present paper consider the case of a fluid injected at the Hele-Shaw wedge of specified angle. It is a step forward to better understand the fingering phenomenon in Hele-Shaw cells. The main point is to give the bifurcation diagram in terms of the wedge angle. Important previous results are given in [\textit{M. Ben Amar}, ``Viscous fingering in a wedge'', Phys. Rev. A 44, No. 6, 3673--3685 (1991); \textit{Y. Tu}, ``Saffman-Taylor problem in sector geometry: solution and selection'', Phys Rev. A 44, No. 2, 1203--1210 (1991)]. \N\NThe new element of the present paper is to explain how the selection mechanism can be derived by using an exponential asymptotic method. A set of boundary-integral equations is governing the potential-flow problem. Important tools are the Hilbert transform, the hypergeometric function \(F\), some properties of the Ricatty's equation, the Liouville-Green or WKBJ-style ansatz. The selection mechanism is carefully studied in section 7. Very interesting details concerning governing equations, temporal scaling and the singularities appearing in the matching procedure between different flow regions, are given in Appendix. Very useful figures and graphs explain in detail the obtained numerical results.