PREDICTION OF MAXIMUM PORE SIZE OF POROUS MEDIA BASED ON FRACTAL GEOMETRY

The macroscopic transport properties of porous media have received steadily attention in science and engineering areas in the past decades. It has been shown that the maximum pore size in a porous medium plays the crucial role in determination of transport properties such as flow resistance, permeability, thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity, etc. In this study, two models for predicting the maximum pore size in porous media based on fractal geometry are presented. The present analytical expressions may be used to calculate the maximum pore size from porosity and permeability data, as well as from liquid properties, structure parameters of media and imbibition coefficient data, respectively. Predicted maximum pore sizes by the proposed models show good agreement with the available experimental results.