Porosity–permeability properties generated with a new 2-parameter 3D hydraulic pore-network model for consolidated and unconsolidated porous media

A new method is presented to construct a simple and general site bond correlated 3D HYdraulic POre Network model (HYPON) of hydraulic behavior of porous media for a wide range of permeability and porosity. Pore scale microstructure in this model is captured through simple power functions of Betiʹs influence lines that fix both the location and the size of throat (the narrowest section of bond) by relating the important elements of microstructure such as coordination number, porebody sizes and pore wall curvature. The new element in pore-network architecture is thus, the location of throat, which is important for smooth hydraulic transitions during steady state flow conditions. Despite the reduced number of parameters in comparison with other pore-network models, the morphological characteristics of HYPON compare well to those of the process-based predictive models in literature, and these characteristics are sensitive to the variance of porebody sizes rather than to the used type of the porebody size distributions. Processes such as diagenesis and dissolution are captured implicitly through the pore wall curvature parameter. Different combinations of porosity and permeability relations are obtained if the bond curvature and porebody sizes are varied. These relations reveal that effects of diagenesis and dissolution on the permeability may be ignored as they are secondary to effects on porosity.