POROSITY FOR FRACTAL MEDIA

The flow and transport properties of fractal porous media, such as flow resistance, permeability, and dispersion conductivity, have gradually attracted much attention in the past decades. The properties may be closely related to the microstructures of the media and strongly depend on the structure of the pore space. Porosity is an important and fundamental parameter for porous materials. The classical definition of porosity was practical on a large scale, but not very effective especially when physical properties are considered on the nano-scale. In this paper, a measurable definition and a new theoretical model for a spherical fractal medium are developed based on the fractal characters of porous media and fractional integrals. The model can well describe the porosity for all scales, and it is especially useful for fractal porous materials and composite manufacturing.