Permeability

Permeability measures how readily a fluid flows through connected pores or fractures in a material. It depends on the pathways’ geometry and connectivity, not merely on how much pore space exists.

Darcy's law: An equation relating fluid flow through a porous medium to pressure gradient, fluid viscosity, and permeability. It makes permeability the proportionality linking pressure-driven flow to the material’s structure.
Porosity: The fraction of a material’s bulk volume occupied by voids. Porosity measures available void space, while permeability measures whether that space conducts flow.
Aquifer: A permeable geological formation that stores and transmits groundwater. Aquifer productivity depends on how readily its connected pores transmit water.
Intrinsic permeability: A fluid-independent property describing a porous material’s capacity to transmit fluid. It distinguishes the material’s flow capacity from fluid-dependent hydraulic conductivity.
Upscaling: The process of deriving larger-scale properties from measurements or models at smaller scales. Laboratory permeability must often be converted into representative values for whole formations.
Pore network model: A representation of porous material as connected pore bodies and narrower throats. It explains how individual pore connections combine to control bulk permeability.
Hydraulic conductivity: A measure of how readily a saturated material transmits water under a hydraulic gradient. Unlike intrinsic permeability, it also depends on the flowing fluid’s properties.
Reservoir engineering: The engineering discipline concerned with recovering fluids from subsurface reservoirs. Permeability controls how oil, gas, and injected fluids move through reservoir rock.
Absolute permeability: The permeability of a porous medium when a single fluid phase occupies its pores. It provides a baseline against which multiphase relative permeability is expressed.
Fracture flow: Fluid movement through fractures in rock or other solid materials. Fracture connectivity and aperture can dominate permeability at field scale.

Linked from 34 pages