With X-ray computed tomography still being flawed as a result of limitations in terms of spatial resolution and cost, toxic mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) is nowadays the prevailing technique to determine PSDs of most porous media. Recently, yield stress fluids porosimetry method (YSM) has been identified as a promising clean alternative to MIP. This technique is based on the particular percolation patterns followed by yield stress fluids, which only flow through certain pores when injected at a given pressure gradient. In previous works, YSM was used to characterize natural and synthetic porous media, and the results were compared with MIP showing reasonable agreement. However, considerable uncertainty still remains regarding the characterized pore dimension with each method arising from the highly complex geometry of the interstices in real porous media. Therefore, a critical stage for the validation of YSM consists in achieving successful characterization of model porous media with well-known pore morphology and topology. With this objective in mind, a set of four packs of glass beads each with a given monodisperse bead size were characterized in the present work using different porosimetry methods: experimental YSM, numerically simulation of MIP and pore-network extraction from a 3D image. The results provided by these techniques were compared, allowing the identification of the pore dimensions being characterized in each case. The results of this research elucidate the causes of the discrepancies between the considered porosimetry methods and demonstrate the usefulness of the PSD provided by YSM when predicting flow in porous media.

中文翻译：

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应用无毒屈服应力流体孔隙率测定法和孔隙网络模型来表征球形珠粒的孔径分布

由于空间分辨率和成本方面的限制，X 射线计算机断层扫描仍然存在缺陷，有毒压汞孔隙率测定法 (MIP) 是当今确定大多数多孔介质 PSD 的流行技术。最近，屈服应力流体孔隙率测定法 (YSM) 已被确定为 MIP 的一种有前途的清洁替代品。该技术基于特定的渗流模式，随后是屈服应力流体，当以给定的压力梯度注入时，这些流体仅流过某些孔隙。在以前的工作中，YSM 用于表征天然和合成多孔介质，并将结果与​​ MIP 进行比较，显示出合理的一致性。然而，由于实际多孔介质中空隙的高度复杂的几何形状，每种方法的特征孔尺寸仍然存在相当大的不确定性。因此，验证 YSM 的关键阶段在于成功表征具有众所周知的孔隙形态和拓扑结构的模型多孔介质。考虑到这一目标，在目前的工作中使用不同的孔隙率测量方法对一组四包玻璃珠进行了表征，其中每包具有给定的单分散珠尺寸：实验性 YSM、MIP 的数值模拟和从 3D 图像中提取孔隙网络。将这些技术提供的结果进行比较，从而确定每种情况下表征的孔隙尺寸。