https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01979-0
Regular Article
Demonstrating invasion percolation with a table-top experiment
1
Physique et Mécanique des Milieux Hétérogènes, ESPCI–UMR 7636 CNRS–PSL–Research University, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, 75005, Paris, France
2
CNRS, LEGI, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, 38041, Grenoble, France
3
CNRS, LIPhy, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, 38000, Grenoble, France
4
CentraleSupélec, ENS Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
5
CNRS, FAST, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405, Orsay, France
a
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Received:
16
September
2025
Accepted:
18
September
2025
Published online:
29
September
2025
This paper highlights in an historical perspective a seminal “table-top” experiment (Clément et al. in J Phys D Appl Phys 20(5):608, 1987) which, in the 1980s, was one of the first experimental demonstrations of the relevance of invasion percolation to describe quasi-static drainage of a porous medium. This experiment involves the invasion of a crushed glass packing by molten Wood metal with a large influence of gravity. To account for it, data are compared to predictions of the gradient invasion percolation model in which the effect of buoyancy is modeled by a gradient of the percolation parameter. Experimental results agree well with 3D numerical simulations (Gouyet et al. in Physica A 157(1):497–498, 1989) based on this model. This demonstrates that such simple experiments using limited equipment may validate complex physical mechanisms. It is argued that, while the availability of refined new techniques may seem to make this approach obsolete, such experiments remain needed to obtain pioneering results and to open new research fields. This conclusion aligns with Etienne Guyon’s tireless action to initiate table-top experiments providing fundamental physics results.
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Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
