Permeability Model for Fractal Porous Media with Rough Capillary Walls

The pore space of a porous medium is typically considered to consist of a collection of curved capillaries with rough walls. A model describing roughness is established by applying fractal theory. As a result, a modified permeability model is derived theoretically, which is closely related to roughness. To validate this model, a new form of Kozeny–Carman (KC) equation is also developed for estimating permeability on a set of benchmark rock samples, and a good agreement was achieved in terms of small relative error between measured and predicted permeabilities. Therefore, we can conclude that pore roughness should not be ignored in predicting permeability. Although the improved KC equation can predict permeability effectively too, it is not practical as the KC constant is difficult to determine.