Porosity or void fraction is a measure of the void (i.e. "empty") spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume, between 0 and 1, or as a percentage between 0% and 100%.
On the average, however, the porosity and permeability of rocks decrease as their depth below land surface increases; the pores and cracks in rocks at great depths are closed or greatly reduced in size because of the weight of overlying rocks.
Porosity is an important property of a material, describing the ratio of voids to the total volume. This property is important in many fields, including geology, materials science, environmental studies, and engineering.
In general, the porosity of reservoir rocks ranges from 5% to 30%, and typical range of porosity is between 10% and 20% (Tiab and Donaldson, 2015). The pore types are classified by both morphological and geological features (Selley, 1998; Hook, 2003).
Porosity is a fundamental property of materials describing the amount of void space, or empty volume, contained within a solid structure. It is a universal characteristic found in everything from subterranean rock layers to human bone tissue and engineered filtration devices.
The porosity of earth materials originates during two phases: 1) during the deposition of sediments, lithification or cooling of crystalline rock; and 2) after deposition as the earth material is exposed to other conditions such as compaction, weathering, fracturing and/or metamorphism.
Porosity is the ratio of the volume of voids to the total volume of a material. Understand the methods and tools used to assess porosity and its impact on the properties of materials.