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Percolation theory and models of unsaturated porous media
Author(s) -
Golden J. M.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr016i001p00201
Subject(s) - tortuosity , porous medium , percolation theory , percolation (cognitive psychology) , characterisation of pore space in soil , statistical physics , hysteresis , saturation (graph theory) , flow (mathematics) , mathematics , porosity , mechanics , materials science , geotechnical engineering , geology , physics , topology (electrical circuits) , condensed matter physics , combinatorics , neuroscience , biology
Concepts from percolation theory (Broadbent and Hammersley, 1957) are applied to a model of unsaturated flow through porous media. This approach in principle allows one to build into the model aspects of the topological structure of pore space. At a very general level the input of results from percolation theory gives a relationship between minimum and maximum saturation values for a medium which should be experimentally checkable, though probably not without sophisticated techniques. Also, it gives some qualitative insight into known properties of unsaturated flow. Furthermore, there emerges a way of looking at the phenomenon of hysteresis that is quite different from the standard approach. This aspect is explored in some detail, and two possible new models are presented. A subsidiary result obtained from the detailed model used is that in a simple pore model the inclusion of a pore length parameter, statistically correlated with pore radius, is equivalent, at least in a restricted sense, to incorporating into the model the concept of tortuosity.