The scale dependence of permeability: Effects of pore-throat size
distribution and pore connectivity
Abstract
Scaling has been a long-standing challenge in subsurface hydrology, soil
physics, and many other research disciplines. The effect of length scale
(or sample dimension) has been known in the literature, and inconsistent
results have been reported. For example, experimental measurements
typically show that permeability k should increase with increasing
scale. However, numerical simulations and some theoretical estimations
appear to imply the opposite. In this study, we simulated permeability
in twelve synthetic and four Fontainebleau pore networks with different
pore-throat size distributions. For each pore network, simulations were
carried out for ten pore coordination numbers Z = 1.5, 1.65, 1.75, 2, 3,
3.25, 3.5, 4, 5, and 6. We found a transition in the scale dependence of
the permeability in the synthetic pore networks. More specifically, our
results showed that the permeability increased with the scale for larger
pore coordination numbers, while it decreased with the scale for smaller
Z. In Fontainebleau pore networks, however, the trends were decreasing
permeabilities regardless of the value of Z. We invoked concept of
finite-size scaling analysis, a vigorous theoretical framework from
physics, to address the effect of scale on the permeability. Although
the plot of the permeability versus the network size for each pore
network appeared scattered, the data collapsed together by applying
finite-size scaling analysis. Our results demonstrated that finite-size
scaling analysis is a promising approach to address the effect of scale
on permeability.