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5.5 Conclusion
Our approach is also expected to be of significance in determining other transport
properties such as dispersivities and mass transfer coefficients. Under unsaturated
conditions, because of the presence of the non-wetting phase within
the central part of the pore space, there will be limited mixing of solutes or
particles within the bore bodies. However, all solute transport models assign
one average concentration to each pore body implying that there is full mixing
within the pore body. Using our new formulation, since we can calculate
pressure and fluxes within pore bodies, limited mixing will result.
Of course, in natural porous media, the pores are mostly irregular. With
current measurement and imaging techniques it is possible to extract the sizes
and angularity and shape factors for both pore bodies and pore throats (Zhang
et al. [2010]). Considering the sizes of pore bodies and their shape factors
reported in the literatures, we can conclude that including the effect of them can
improve the results of pore-network modeling (Lindquist et al. [2000]; Zhang
et al. [2010]).
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