• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.367-375
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• 2010

Understanding the interactions between earth materials and fluids is essential for studying the diverse geological processes in the Earth's surface and interior. In order to better understand the interactions between earth materials and fluids, we explore the effect of specific surface area and porosity on structural parameters of pore structures. We obtained 3D pore structures, using random packing simulations of porous media composed of single sized spheres with varying the particle size and porosity, and then we analyzed configurational entropy for 2D cross sections of porous media and cube counting fractal dimension for 3D porous networks. The results of the configurational entropy analysis show that the entropy length decreases from 0.8 to 0.2 with increasing specific surface area from 2.4 to $8.3mm^2/mm^3$, and the maximum configurational entropy increases from 0.94 to 0.99 with increasing porosity from 0.33 to 0.46. On the basis of the strong correlation between the liquid volume fraction (i.e., porosity) and configurational entropy, we suggest that elastic properties and viscosity of mantle melts can be expressed using configurational entropy. The results of the cube counting fractal dimension analysis show that cube counting fractal dimension increases with increasing porosity at constant specific surface area, and increases from 2.65 to 2.98 with increasing specific surface area from 2.4 to $8.3mm^2/mm^3$. On the basis of the strong correlation among cube counting fractal dimension, specific surface area, and porosity, we suggest that seismic wave attenuation and structural disorder in fluid-rock-melt composites can be described using cube counting fractal dimension.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.313-324
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• 2009

We explore the effect of particle shape and size on 3-dimensional (3D) network and pore structure of porous earth materials composed of glass beads and silica gel using NMR micro-imaging in order to gain better insights into relationship between structure and the corresponding hydrologic and seismological properties. The 3D micro-imaging data for the model porous networks show that the specific surface area, porosity, and permeability range from 2.5 to $9.6\;mm^2/mm^3$, from 0.21 to 0.38, and from 11.6 to 892.3 D (Darcy), respectively, which are typical values for unconsolidated sands. The relationships among specific surface area, porosity, and permeability of the porous media are relatively well explained with the Kozeny equation. Cube counting fractal dimension analysis shows that fractal dimension increases from ~2.5－2.6 to 3.0 with increasing specific surface area from 2.5 to $9.6\;mm^2/mm^3$, with the data also suggesting the effect of porosity. Specific surface area, porosity, permeability, and cube counting fractal dimension for the natural mongolian sandstone are $0.33\;mm^2/mm^3$, 0.017, 30.9 mD, and 1.59, respectively. The current results highlight that NMR micro-imaging, together with detailed statistical analyses can be useful to characterize 3D pore structures of various porous earth materials and be potentially effective in accounting for transport properties and seismic wave velocity and attenuation of diverse porous media in earth crust and interiors.