An unbiased and efficient procedure for 3‐D connectivity measurement as applied to porous media
Hong Qiang Zhao, Ian F. MacDonald · Journal of Microscopy · 1993
Summary A new stereological technique to measure the mean genus (connectivity) per unit volume Gv of a porous medium is described and applied to a real sandstone sample. The technique is based on the ‘net volume tangent counts’ performed on disector samples, i.e. pairs of consecutive sections of an interconnected structure. It consists of a set of simple counting rules applied to the features on the sections of the structure and can be easily implemented manually. The applicability and efficiency of the procedure is evaluated by applying it to a Berea sandstone sample which has been studied previously using a network analysis approach by interactive three‐dimensional computer reconstruction. It is shown that the procedure yields results in good agreement with the network analysis result, but has the advantages that it is much easier to implement, is more flexible in how the data are collected, is more efficient, and is known to provide an unbiased estimate of the mean genus per unit volume of the whole structure.