Nevertheless the four images are visibly different, and the key difficulty is to characterize these differences quantitatively in such a way that the characterization can be used to predict physical transport quantities such as permeability, conductivity or elastic constants. This methodology was given the name local porosity theory because it focuses on local fluctuations of porosity and other geometrical descriptors. It allows a quantitative transition from microscopic to macroscopic scales in porous media. A particularly important subclass of disordered heterogeneous materials are porous media. For porous media, the prediction of multiphase fluid flow has remained largely impossible despite many years of research in academia and industry.
Light grey represents large velocities, dark grey represents low velocities.
The velocities are obtained by solving Stokes' equation numerically. The work on porous media is headed by R. Hilfer. It focuses on the theoretical description of one- and multiphase transport in porous media. In the following the current projects are listed together with the persons working in them. The work on porous media was supported by scientific agencies inside and outside Germany.