A New Method for Generating Pore-Network Models of Porous Media

In this study, we have developed a new method to generate a multi-directional pore network for representing a porous medium. The method is based on a regular cubic lattice network, which has two elements: pore bodies located at the regular lattice points and pore throats connecting the pore bodies. One of the main features of our network is that pore throats can be oriented in 13 different directions, allowing a maximum coordination number of 26 that is possible in a regular lattice in 3D space. The coordination number of pore bodies ranges from 0 to 26, with a pre-specified average value for the whole network. We have applied this method to reconstruct real sandstone and granular sand samples through utilizing information on their coordination number distributions. Good agreement was found between simulation results and observation data on coordination number distribution and other network properties, such as number of pore bodies and pore throats and average coordination number. Our method can be especially useful in studying the effect of structure and coordination number distribution of pore networks on transport and multiphase flow in porous media systems.