Fractal Models of Porous Media

As pointed out in the foreword to the first edition of this book, it is the distribution of the fluids within a medium rather than the medium itself that directly controls the properties of flow, conduction, dispersion, and fluid retention. Of course the distribution of the fluids within the medium is influenced importantly by the structural properties of the medium itself. Insofar as they can be assumed to reflect the characteristics of the pore space, one can develop medium models which generate observed pressure-saturation curves. Most of these models have fractal characteristics. The present chapter reviews a number of fractal models that generate similar to identical pressure-saturation curves though with different interpretations.