Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Three-Dimensional Deformable Pore Networks, Jack W. Conrad, Laura J Pyrak-Nolte

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Porous structures in materials play a part in many areas of research and development. A couple of examples of this are extraction of water through aquifers and oil through fracking processes. Current understanding of the small scale fluid-fluid interactions in the structure of these porous materials stops at data of the two dimensional interface between the two fluids. This experiment aimed to create three dimensional, transparent, deformable micro-models which are expected allow us to obtain three dimensional data sets of the capillary pressure–saturation–interfacial area per volume relationship. The micro-models were synthesized using a grain deposition technique. Grains were formed using …