Patent Document ID: 9494537
Application ID: 13977636
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for determination of thermal conductivity of a saturated porous medium, comprising the following steps: determining components forming a composition of the saturated porous medium and thermal conductivity coefficients of the determined components; performing an X-ray scan of a sample of the saturated porous medium and obtaining a three-dimensional image of the sample which is a first single computational domain and consists of N voxels, with N=N x ·N y ·N z , N z , where N x , N y , N z are numbers of voxels along x, y, z axes, respectively; combining the N voxels into n coarse cells, with n=n x ·n y ·n z , n z , n x , n y , n z , are numbers of coarse cells along the x, y, z axes, respectively, with 2<n x <N x , 2<n y <N y , 2<n z <N z ; solving a first thermal conductivity problem for each of the coarse cells in each of the x, y, z directions and determining effective thermal conductivity coefficients in each direction; combining the coarse cells into a second single computational domain; solving a second thermal conductivity problem for the second single computational domain which is composed of the coarse cells and determining effective thermal conductivity coefficients for the whole computational domain in three directions; and determining a thermal conductivity coefficient of the saturated porous medium as the average of the determined thermal conductivity coefficients along the coordinate axes.