Abstract

Capillary pressure is a basic parameter in the study of the behavior of porous media containing two or more immiscible fluid phases. In this study, the capillary pressure of porous media is predicted based on based on fractal property of pore in porous media. The formula of calculating the capillary pressure of porous media is given. The capillary pressure of porous media is expressed as a function of porosity, fractal dimension of pore and saturation. Based on the parametric effect analysis, we conclude that the capillary pressure of porous media is negatively correlated with the porosity and saturation. Besides, it is shown that the capillary pressure of unsaturated porous media decreases with the increase of saturation. No additional empirical constant is introduced. This model contains less empirical constants than the conventional correlations. The model predictions are compared with the existing experimental data and good agreement between the model predictions and experimental data is found. The validity of the present fractal model is thus verified.

Keywords:

Capillary pressure, fractal, porosity, porous media, saturation,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.