Computation of Interfacial Areas, Common Line Lengths and Interfacial Curvatures from Experimentally Derived Data

Microscale investigation of porous medium systems contributes to our understanding of macroscopic systems at a fundamental level and is expected to play an important role in the formulation of macroscopic models. We present an overview of methods designed to obtain accurate estimates of interfacial areas, common line lengths, and interfacial curvatures for general porous medium data sets. We then describe how these methods can be applied to experimentally generated data, examining data sets obtained using x-ray micro-tomography as an example. Detailed discussion of pertinent issues is provided, including manipulation of raw data to obtain an optimal form for input data, the impact of smoothing operations, and resolution necessary to obtain reliable estimates of variables of interest.