In this paper, we numerically investigate the statistical properties of the nonflowing areas of Bingham fluid in two-dimensional porous media. First, we demonstrate that the size probability distribution of the unyielded clusters follows a power-law decay with a large size cutoff. This cutoff is shown to diverge following a power law as the imposed pressure drop tends to a critical value. In addition, we observe that the exponents are almost identical for two different types of porous media. Finally, those scaling properties allow us to account for the quadratic relationship between the pressure gradient and velocity.

• Received 14 November 2014
• Corrected 25 February 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.91.023011