A Study on the Mechanical Properties of the Representative Volume Element in Fractal Porous Media

Abstract EN

Natural porous structure is extremely complex, and it is of great significance to study the macroscopic mechanical response of the representative volume element (RVE) with the microstructure of porous media.

The real porous media RVE is generated by an improved quartet structure generation set (QSGS), and the connectivity of the reconstructed porous media models is analyzed.

The fractal dimension of the RVE is calculated by the box-counting method, which considers the different porosity, different fractal dimension, and different mechanical properties of the matrix.

Thus, the stress-strain curves of the RVE in the elastoplastic stage under different conditions are obtained.

The results show that when the matrix mechanics are consistent, the mechanical properties of the porous media RVE are negatively correlated with the porosity and fractal dimension; when the difference between the porosity and fractal dimension increases, the trend is more obvious.

The mechanical properties of the RVE have a positive correlation with the modulus of elasticity of the matrix, though the correlation with Poisson’s ratio of the matrix is weak.

The fractal dimension of complex porous media can better predict the RVE mechanical characteristics than the porosity.