Continuum percolation of porous media via random packing of overlapping cube-like particles

Abstract

The pore configuration in porous medium is assumed to be the randomly distributed cube-like particles which can overlap each other in the periodic cubic domain, and the impact of particle characteristics on the percolation property of these cube-like particle packing systems is analyzed. Firstly, by combining the percolation models and finite-size scaling analysis, three numerical parameters (i.e., percolation transition width ΔL, local percolation threshold ψc(L), and correlation length exponent ν) for the cube-like particle systems with shape parameter s in [1.0, + ∞] are derived successively. Then, based on the relation between the percolation threshold ψc in infinite space and the local percolation threshold ψc(L), the corresponding ψc with s in [1.0, + ∞] are further determined. It is shown from the study that the characteristics of cube-like particles have significant influence on the global percolation threshold ψc of the particle packing systems. As the parameter s increases from 1.0 to = ∞, the percolation threshold ψc will go down persistently. When the surface of cube-like particles is cubical and spherical, respectively, the minimum and maximum thresholds ψc,min and ψc,max are obtained.