Modeling the pore structure of porous media

A physicomathematical alternative to capillaric modeling of the pore structure of porous media is proposed. With this model, the hydraulic conductivity of porous materials is determined from a ‘pore domain’ characterization of the pore space by using an appropriate conductance theory for estimating the flux contribution of the various components of heterogeneous media. The proposed model is versatile yet mathematically tractable and is capable of analyzing fluid flow through porous materials of widely differing structure including anisotropic and structured media. A comparative study of the predictions of this model with those of a model proposed by E. C. Childs and N. Collis‐George and now widely used in soil science is made for several media. The findings indicate that indiscriminate use of the latter model may be responsible for the gross overpredictions of hydraulic conductivity for some porous materials and also for the reported distortions in the relationships between conductivity and the degree of saturation for some soils.