Wei, D., Wang, Z., Pereira, J.M., Gan, Y. (2021) Permeability of Uniformly Graded 3D Printed Granular Media. Geophysical Research Letters, in press. [DOI]
The shape of grains can influence the way how water transports inside a granular material. This study uses 3D printing technique to well control grain shapes. The grain morphology is captured through combinations of relative roughness and fractal dimension, relevant to a wide range of geomaterials. We revisit the classical permeability equation with the prior knowledge of the grain shape. It is found that the model coefficients used in the permeability equation, usually obtained through fitting against experiment measurement, do indeed contain key intrinsic morphological information.
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