Exprimental Study on the Morphology in a Large Hele–Shaw Cell

Abstract

We report experimental results of anisotropic viscous fingering in a large scale Hele–Shaw cell. This fluid dynamical system corresponds to crystal growth system very well, and we can observe faceted growth, surface tension dendrite, tip oscillating growth, tip splitting growth and kinetic dendrite increasing the injected gas pressure. The results of surface tension dendrite and kinetic dendrite quantitatively agree with the theoretical results. Tip oscillating growth and tip splitting growth are observed between the morphological transitions, which we discuss with the ratio of the area to the contour of the morphology.