Thanh, L.D.; Jougnot, D.; Van Do, P.; Hue, D.T.M.; Thuy, T.T.C.; Tuyen, V.P. Predicting Electrokinetic Coupling and Electrical Conductivity in Fractured Media Using a Fractal Distribution of Tortuous Capillary Fractures. Appl. Sci.2021, 11, 5121.
Thanh, L.D.; Jougnot, D.; Van Do, P.; Hue, D.T.M.; Thuy, T.T.C.; Tuyen, V.P. Predicting Electrokinetic Coupling and Electrical Conductivity in Fractured Media Using a Fractal Distribution of Tortuous Capillary Fractures. Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 5121.
Thanh, L.D.; Jougnot, D.; Van Do, P.; Hue, D.T.M.; Thuy, T.T.C.; Tuyen, V.P. Predicting Electrokinetic Coupling and Electrical Conductivity in Fractured Media Using a Fractal Distribution of Tortuous Capillary Fractures. Appl. Sci.2021, 11, 5121.
Thanh, L.D.; Jougnot, D.; Van Do, P.; Hue, D.T.M.; Thuy, T.T.C.; Tuyen, V.P. Predicting Electrokinetic Coupling and Electrical Conductivity in Fractured Media Using a Fractal Distribution of Tortuous Capillary Fractures. Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 5121.
Abstract
The electrokinetics methods have a great potential to characterize hydrogeological processes in geological media, especially in complex hydrosystems such as fractured formations. In this work, we conceptualize fractured media as a bunch of parallel capillary fractures following the fractal size distribution. This conceptualization permits to obtain analytical models for both the electrical conductivity and the electrokinetic coupling in water saturated fractured media. We explore two different approaches to express the electrokinetic coupling. First, we express the streaming potential coupling coefficient as a function of the zeta potential and then we obtain the effective charge density in terms of macroscopic hydraulic and electrokinetic parameters of porous media. We show that when the surface electrical conductivity is negligible, the proposed models reduces to the previously proposed one based on a bundle of cylindrical capillaries. This model opens up a wide range of applications to monitor the water flow in fractured media.
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
