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American Physical Society, Physical review E: Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 3(88), 2013

DOI: 10.1103/physreve.88.033002

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Pore-scale micro-computed-tomography imaging: Nonwetting-phase cluster-size distribution during drainage and imbibition

Journal article published in 2013 by A. Georgiadis, S. Berg ORCID, A. Makurat, G. Maitland, H. Ott
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We investigated the cluster-size distribution of the residual nonwetting phase in a sintered glass-bead porous medium at two-phase flow conditions, by means of micro-computed-tomography (μCT) imaging with pore-scale resolution. Cluster-size distribution functions and cluster volumes were obtained by image analysis for a range of injected pore volumes under both imbibition and drainage conditions; the field of view was larger than the porosity-based representative elementary volume (REV). We did not attempt to make a definition for a two-phase REV but used the nonwetting-phase cluster-size distribution as an indicator. Most of the nonwetting-phase total volume was found to be contained in clusters that were one to two orders of magnitude larger than the porosity-based REV. The largest observed clusters in fact ranged in volume from 65% to 99% of the entire nonwetting phase in the field of view. As a consequence, the largest clusters observed were statistically not represented and were found to be smaller than the estimated maximum cluster length. The results indicate that the two-phase REV is larger than the field of view attainable by μCT scanning, at a resolution which allows for the accurate determination of cluster connectivity.