TORTUOSIMETRIC OPERATOR FOR COMPLEX POROUS MEDIA CHARACTERIZATION

Abstract

Geometric tortuosity is one of the foremost topological characteristics of porous media. Despite the various definitions in the literature, to our knowledge, they are all linked to an arbitrary propagation direction. This article proposes a novel topological descriptor, named M-tortuosity, by giving a more straightforward definition, describing the data regardless of physicochemical processes. M-tortuosity, based on the concept of geometric tortuosity, is a scalable descriptor, meaning that information of several dimensions (scalar, histograms, 3D maps) is available. It is applicable on complex disconnected structures without any arbitrary definition of entry and exit. Topological information can be represented by aggregation into a unique scalar descriptor for classification purposes. It is extended by iterative erosions to take into account porous structure narrowness, especially bottleneck effects. This new descriptor, called M-tortuosity-by-iterative-erosions, describes tortuosity of the porous part as seen by a spherical particle of given size walking along the network. Boolean models are used to simulate different porous media structures in order to test the proposed characterization.