Fluid flow in 3-dimensional porous systems shows power law scaling with Minkowski functionals

Abstract

Integral geometry uses four geometric invariants -- the Minkowski functionals -- to characterize certain subsets of 3-dimensional space. The question was, how is the fluid flow in a 3-dimensional porous system related to these invariants? In this work, we systematically study the dependency of permeability on the geometrical characteristics of two categories of 3-dimensional porous systems generated: (i) stochastic and (ii) deterministic. For the stochastic systems, we investigated both normal and log-normal size distribution of grains. For the deterministic porous systems, we checked for a cubic and a hexagonal arrangement of grains of equal size. Our studies reveal that for any 3-dimensional porous system, ordered or disordered, permeability $k$ follows a unique scaling relation with the Minkowski functionals: (a) volume of the pore space, (b) integral mean curvature, (c) Euler Characteristic and (d) critical cross-sectional area of the pore space. The cubic and the hexagonal symmetrical systems formed the upper and lower bounds of the scaling relations, respectively. The disordered systems lay between these bounds. Moreover, we propose a combinatoric $F$ that weaves together the four Minkowski functionals and follows a power-law scaling with permeability. The scaling exponent is independent of particle size and distribution and has a universal value of $ 0.428$ for 3-dimensional porous systems built of spherical grains.