Simulation of the relationship between porosity and tortuosity in porous media with cubic particles

Abstract

Tortuosity is an important parameter used in areas such as vascular medicine, neurobiology, and the field of soil permeability and diffusion to express the mass transport in porous media. It is a function of the porosity and the shape and distribution of particles. In this paper, the tortuosity of cubic particles is calculated. With the assumption that the porous medium is homogeneous, the problem is converted to the micro-level over a unit cell, and geometry models of flow paths are proposed. In three-dimensional (3D) cells, the flow paths are too complicated to define. Hence, the 3D models are converted to two-dimensional (2D) models to simplify the calculation process. It is noticed that the path in the 2D model is shorter than that in the 3D model. As a result, triangular particles and the interaction are also taken into consideration to account for the longer distance respectively. We have proposed quadrate particle and interaction (QI) and quadrate and triangular particle (QT) models with cubic particles. Both models have shown good agreement with the experimental data. It is also found that they can predict the toruosities of some kinds of porous media, like freshwater sediment and Negev chalk.