Fluid flow processes such as drainage and evaporation in porous media are crucial in geological and biological systems. The motion of the displacement front of a moving fluid through multi-phase interfaces is often associated with abrupt mechanical energy release, detectable as acoustic emissions. The exact origin of these pulses and their damping mechanisms are still subjects of debate. Here, we study the characteristics of such acoustic emissions during evaporation of water from artificial microfluidic vessels, inspired by the physiology of vascular water-transport in plants. From the extracted settling times of the recorded acoustic emissions, we identify three pulse types and attribute their origins to bubble formation, snap-off events and rapid pore invasion. We also show that the resonance frequencies between 10 and 70 kHz present in specific pulse types decrease with increasing vessel radius (ranging from 0.25 to 1.0 mm) and length (ranging from 2.5 to 10.0 mm). Our findings provide insight into evaporation-induced acoustic emissions from microfluidic systems, both natural and artificial, and their potential use in non-invasive inspection or vascular health monitoring.

See methods folder in data and paper.

Most scripts can be opened with Matlab R2022a.
Simulation were performed with Comsol 5.6.
Figures were made with Adobe Illustrator 2021.