An experimental approach for estimating the porosity and effective porosity of porous media by permittivity methods

In the sub-surface environments, detection of the movement of contaminant substances and recharge of groundwater by rainfall are very important factors which contain porosity and effective porosity of porous media. In this paper, the applicability of permittivity methods and proposed dielectric mixing models (DDMs) are discussed. This study showed that the ratio of effective porosity to porosity of Toyoura and River sands were 0.856 and 0.843. From the relationships between the relative porosity and effective porosity, all measured values can be confirmed to outside the range to about 0.800 for Toyoura and River sands under all experiments by FDR and FDR-V systems. In the study, this permittivity equipment can be considered to be good enough to measure determining the physical parameters of saturated soils. Consequently, this permittivity method can be contributed to estimate a porosity and effective porosity of saturated porous media because it is easy and instantaneous than previous in-situ methods.