Predicting porosity, permeability, and tortuosity of porous media from images by deep learning

Sci Rep. 2020 Dec 8;10(1):21488. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-78415-x.

Abstract

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) are utilized to encode the relation between initial configurations of obstacles and three fundamental quantities in porous media: porosity ([Formula: see text]), permeability (k), and tortuosity (T). The two-dimensional systems with obstacles are considered. The fluid flow through a porous medium is simulated with the lattice Boltzmann method. The analysis has been performed for the systems with [Formula: see text] which covers five orders of magnitude a span for permeability [Formula: see text] and tortuosity [Formula: see text]. It is shown that the CNNs can be used to predict the porosity, permeability, and tortuosity with good accuracy. With the usage of the CNN models, the relation between T and [Formula: see text] has been obtained and compared with the empirical estimate.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't