Glover, PWJ orcid.org/0000-0003-1715-5474 and Luo, M (2020) The Porosity and Permeability of Binary Grain Mixtures. Transport in Porous Media, 132 (1). pp. 1-37. ISSN 0169-3913
Abstract
The processes that control binary mixing of two sizes of grains have been investigated theoretically and validated by comparison with experimental data. These seemingly simple experiments are difficult to carry out with the degree of precision needed to test the models. We have developed a methodology allowing porosity and permeability to be measured to within ± 4.415% and ± 4.989% (at a flow rate of 5.13 cm3/s) of each value, respectively. Theoretical considerations recognise mixing processes: (1) an interstitiation process whereby small grains fit between larger grains and (2) a replacement process whereby large grains replace smaller grains and the porosity associated with them. A major result of this work is that the theoretical models describing these two processes are independent of grain size and grain shape. The latter of these two findings infers that the models developed in this work are applicable to any shape of grain or type of packing, providing that a representative porosity of each size of grain pack is known independently, either experimentally or theoretically. Experimental validation has shown that the newly developed relationships for porosity described measurements of porosity for near-ideal binary mixtures extremely well, confirming that porosity is always reduced by binary mixing, and that the degree of reduction depends upon the size of the ratio between the two grain sizes. Calculation of permeability from the packing model has also been done. Six different permeability estimation methods have been used. It was found that the most accurate representations of the experimental permeability were obtained (1) when the exact RGPZ (Revil, Glover, Pezard, Zamora) method was used with the porosity mixing models developed in this work and (2) when the exact RGPZ method was used with the weighted geometric mean to calculate a representative grain size.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Binary mixture; Grains; Pores; Porosity; Permeability; RGPZ; Glass beads |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2019 11:11 |
Last Modified: | 02 Mar 2020 14:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11242-020-01378-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:153533 |
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