Lower and Upper Bounds for Hydraulic Tortuosity of Porous Materials

Single-phase fluid flow in porous media is always direction dependent owing to the tortuosity associated with the internal structures of materials that exhibit inherent anisotropy. This paper presents an approach to determining the tortuosity and permeability of porous materials using a structural measure quantifying the directional distribution of pore voids. The approach uses volume averaging methods through which the macroscopic tortuosity …