Measurement of Threshold Pressure Gradient of Microchannels by Static Method

The development of oil fields and laboratory experiment present the threshold pressure gradient (TPG) of liquid flow in low permeability porous media, which is called the micro-size effect in porous media. Some micro-size effects in micro-electro-mechanism systems (MEMS) are not always in agreement with each other. We propose an experiment setup to measure the TPG of microchannels by static method in the microchannels with the diameter ranging from 20--320μm. The results present the existence of TPG in microchannel, and show an effect that the TPG of microchannel increases with decreasing hydrodynamic diameter. The relation between TPG and diameter is in agreement with single-log normalization. Additionally, the influence of errors in the experiment shows the data of experiment are valid. Finally, the
mechanism of micro-size effects is discussed by revealing the facial force between liquid and solid and theory of boundary liquid, but the explanation is still not good, and needs further study.