Definition
Porosity is a fundamental property of material in general and geomaterials (soils and rocks) in particular, being used in many fields such as material science, earth science, hydrogeology, rock and soil mechanics, geotechnical and environmental engineering, petroleum geoscience and engineering etc. Porosity (∅) is a measure of the void space in soils, rocks and it is defined as the ratio between the pore volume (Vp) and the total volume (Vt) or the bulk volume (Vb). A conceptual model of geomaterial (soils, rocks), also known as a petrophysical model, is shown in Fig. 1a, consisting of three major components, i.e., solid, pore space and pore-filing fluids. Porosity can be in fraction (see Eq. 1a) or in percentage (see Eq. 1b). An example of how to calculate the porosity of an idealized granular medium made of uniform spherical grains arranged in a cubic packing is shown in Fig. 1b.
Porosity of a conceptual geomaterial
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Giao, P.H., Nguyen, P.H. (2022). Porosity. In: Daya Sagar, B.S., Cheng, Q., McKinley, J., Agterberg, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Mathematical Geosciences. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26050-7_252-1
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