Impact of pore structure and morphology on flow and transport characteristics in randomly repacked grains with different angularities

Yunwu Xiong; Xiaoxu Long; Guanhua Huang; Alex Furman

doi:10.1016/j.sandf.2019.10.002

Impact of pore structure and morphology on flow and transport characteristics in randomly repacked grains with different angularities

Yunwu Xiong^*, Xiaoxu Long, Guanhua Huang, Alex Furman

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

The flow and transport behaviors in porous media are closely linked to the structure and morphology of the pore space. A fundamental objective of most studies of porous media is to link the pore structure to the hydraulic functions, such as the permeability, capillary pressure and diffusivity, which are necessary for engineering applications. In this paper, an attempt is made to build a direct link between the hydraulic functions and the morphological measures of diverse porous media. Porous columns with different structures and morphologies are generated by randomly packing grains with different shapes and sizes. The pore structure of the repacked porous media is visualized through X-ray computed tomography and quantified by a series of parameters, including the set of Minkowski functionals, diverse characteristic pore sizes, geometric tortuosity and fractal dimension. The intrinsic permeability, molecular diffusivity and apparent thermal conductivity of the repacked porous media are simulated numerically. The Minkowski functionals have the capacity to characterize the microscale complex pore domain of the porous media in a macroscale way. A good linear relationship is shown among the effective pore size, nominal opening dimension and critical pore neck size obtained from the morphological analysis regardless of the shapes and sizes of the grains. The three different pores may serve as the characteristic pore correlation to the intrinsic permeability. The Kozeny-Carman equation can be used to mimic the intrinsic permeability and to serve as a quality-control tool for porous media with different grain angularities. A topologically based model can generally provide a single relationship for porous media randomly repacked with grains of different angularities. The molecular diffusivity of angular grains is found to be larger than that of round ones. The molecular diffusivity is linearly related to the porosity and fractal dimension. Porous media repacked with round grains tend to attain denser packing, a higher number of contacts per unit volume and higher thermal conductivity than media packed with angular particles. The apparent thermal conductivity has a negative linear correlation to the porosity and fractal dimension of porous media with different grain morphologies.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1992-2006
Number of pages	15
Journal	Soils and Foundations
Volume	59
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sandf.2019.10.002
State	Published - Dec 2019
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

Geometric tortuosity
Grain shape
Intrinsic permeability
Minkowski measure
Molecular diffusivity

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10.1016/j.sandf.2019.10.002

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title = "Impact of pore structure and morphology on flow and transport characteristics in randomly repacked grains with different angularities",

abstract = "The flow and transport behaviors in porous media are closely linked to the structure and morphology of the pore space. A fundamental objective of most studies of porous media is to link the pore structure to the hydraulic functions, such as the permeability, capillary pressure and diffusivity, which are necessary for engineering applications. In this paper, an attempt is made to build a direct link between the hydraulic functions and the morphological measures of diverse porous media. Porous columns with different structures and morphologies are generated by randomly packing grains with different shapes and sizes. The pore structure of the repacked porous media is visualized through X-ray computed tomography and quantified by a series of parameters, including the set of Minkowski functionals, diverse characteristic pore sizes, geometric tortuosity and fractal dimension. The intrinsic permeability, molecular diffusivity and apparent thermal conductivity of the repacked porous media are simulated numerically. The Minkowski functionals have the capacity to characterize the microscale complex pore domain of the porous media in a macroscale way. A good linear relationship is shown among the effective pore size, nominal opening dimension and critical pore neck size obtained from the morphological analysis regardless of the shapes and sizes of the grains. The three different pores may serve as the characteristic pore correlation to the intrinsic permeability. The Kozeny-Carman equation can be used to mimic the intrinsic permeability and to serve as a quality-control tool for porous media with different grain angularities. A topologically based model can generally provide a single relationship for porous media randomly repacked with grains of different angularities. The molecular diffusivity of angular grains is found to be larger than that of round ones. The molecular diffusivity is linearly related to the porosity and fractal dimension. Porous media repacked with round grains tend to attain denser packing, a higher number of contacts per unit volume and higher thermal conductivity than media packed with angular particles. The apparent thermal conductivity has a negative linear correlation to the porosity and fractal dimension of porous media with different grain morphologies.",

keywords = "Geometric tortuosity, Grain shape, Intrinsic permeability, Minkowski measure, Molecular diffusivity",

author = "Yunwu Xiong and Xiaoxu Long and Guanhua Huang and Alex Furman",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019",

year = "2019",

month = dec,

doi = "10.1016/j.sandf.2019.10.002",

language = "英语",

volume = "59",

pages = "1992--2006",

journal = "Soils and Foundations",

issn = "0038-0806",

publisher = "Japanese Geotechnical Society",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Impact of pore structure and morphology on flow and transport characteristics in randomly repacked grains with different angularities

AU - Xiong, Yunwu

AU - Long, Xiaoxu

AU - Huang, Guanhua

AU - Furman, Alex

PY - 2019/12

Y1 - 2019/12

N2 - The flow and transport behaviors in porous media are closely linked to the structure and morphology of the pore space. A fundamental objective of most studies of porous media is to link the pore structure to the hydraulic functions, such as the permeability, capillary pressure and diffusivity, which are necessary for engineering applications. In this paper, an attempt is made to build a direct link between the hydraulic functions and the morphological measures of diverse porous media. Porous columns with different structures and morphologies are generated by randomly packing grains with different shapes and sizes. The pore structure of the repacked porous media is visualized through X-ray computed tomography and quantified by a series of parameters, including the set of Minkowski functionals, diverse characteristic pore sizes, geometric tortuosity and fractal dimension. The intrinsic permeability, molecular diffusivity and apparent thermal conductivity of the repacked porous media are simulated numerically. The Minkowski functionals have the capacity to characterize the microscale complex pore domain of the porous media in a macroscale way. A good linear relationship is shown among the effective pore size, nominal opening dimension and critical pore neck size obtained from the morphological analysis regardless of the shapes and sizes of the grains. The three different pores may serve as the characteristic pore correlation to the intrinsic permeability. The Kozeny-Carman equation can be used to mimic the intrinsic permeability and to serve as a quality-control tool for porous media with different grain angularities. A topologically based model can generally provide a single relationship for porous media randomly repacked with grains of different angularities. The molecular diffusivity of angular grains is found to be larger than that of round ones. The molecular diffusivity is linearly related to the porosity and fractal dimension. Porous media repacked with round grains tend to attain denser packing, a higher number of contacts per unit volume and higher thermal conductivity than media packed with angular particles. The apparent thermal conductivity has a negative linear correlation to the porosity and fractal dimension of porous media with different grain morphologies.

AB - The flow and transport behaviors in porous media are closely linked to the structure and morphology of the pore space. A fundamental objective of most studies of porous media is to link the pore structure to the hydraulic functions, such as the permeability, capillary pressure and diffusivity, which are necessary for engineering applications. In this paper, an attempt is made to build a direct link between the hydraulic functions and the morphological measures of diverse porous media. Porous columns with different structures and morphologies are generated by randomly packing grains with different shapes and sizes. The pore structure of the repacked porous media is visualized through X-ray computed tomography and quantified by a series of parameters, including the set of Minkowski functionals, diverse characteristic pore sizes, geometric tortuosity and fractal dimension. The intrinsic permeability, molecular diffusivity and apparent thermal conductivity of the repacked porous media are simulated numerically. The Minkowski functionals have the capacity to characterize the microscale complex pore domain of the porous media in a macroscale way. A good linear relationship is shown among the effective pore size, nominal opening dimension and critical pore neck size obtained from the morphological analysis regardless of the shapes and sizes of the grains. The three different pores may serve as the characteristic pore correlation to the intrinsic permeability. The Kozeny-Carman equation can be used to mimic the intrinsic permeability and to serve as a quality-control tool for porous media with different grain angularities. A topologically based model can generally provide a single relationship for porous media randomly repacked with grains of different angularities. The molecular diffusivity of angular grains is found to be larger than that of round ones. The molecular diffusivity is linearly related to the porosity and fractal dimension. Porous media repacked with round grains tend to attain denser packing, a higher number of contacts per unit volume and higher thermal conductivity than media packed with angular particles. The apparent thermal conductivity has a negative linear correlation to the porosity and fractal dimension of porous media with different grain morphologies.

KW - Geometric tortuosity

KW - Grain shape

KW - Intrinsic permeability

KW - Minkowski measure

KW - Molecular diffusivity

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U2 - 10.1016/j.sandf.2019.10.002

DO - 10.1016/j.sandf.2019.10.002

M3 - 文章

AN - SCOPUS:85076946857

SN - 0038-0806

VL - 59

SP - 1992

EP - 2006

JO - Soils and Foundations

JF - Soils and Foundations

IS - 6

ER -

Impact of pore structure and morphology on flow and transport characteristics in randomly repacked grains with different angularities

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Keywords

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