A DISCUSSION ON FRACTAL MODELS FOR TRANSPORT PHYSICS OF POROUS MEDIA

Fractal model provides an alternative and useful means for studying the transport phenomenon in porous media and analyzing the macroscopic transport properties of porous media, as fractal geometry can successfully characterize disordered and heterogeneous geometrical microstructures of porous media on multi scales. Recently, fractal models on porous media have attracted increasing interests from many different disciplines. In this mini-review paper, a review on fractal models for number-size distribution in porous media is made, and a unified fractal model to characterize pore and particle size distributions is proposed according to the statistical fractal property of the complex microstructure in porous media. Using the fractal scaling laws for pore and fracture size distributions, a fractal capillary bundle model and a fractal tree-like network model are presented and summarized for homogenous and fractured porous media, respectively. And the applications of the fractal capillary bundle model and fractal tree-like network model for analysis of transport physics in porous media are also reviewed.