Prediction of permeability of monodisperse granular materials with a micromechanics approach

•We develop a micromechanics model for predicting unsaturated permeability.•The modeling intrinsic permeability is D2 dependence in monodisperse granular materials.•The relative permeability at low saturation regime decreases by 3 to 8 orders of magnitude.

Prediction of the permeability of porous media is of vital importance to such fields as petroleum engineering, agricultural engineering and civil engineering. The liquid water within unsaturated granular materials is distinguished as the intergranular layer, the wetting layer and the water film. By means of the micromechanics approach, a physical conceptual model is developed to predict the permeability (intrinsic and relative permeabilities) of the monodisperse granular materials. The proposed model has been validated by comparing the available experimental data and the empirical models, and has been used to re-interpret the Kozeny–Carman's relation in particular. The results obtained with this model show that the intergranular water will dominate the flow transport when the saturation degree is higher than the residual saturation degree; when the saturation degree is below the residual saturation degree, the wetting layer will govern the flow transport and the relative permeability will decrease by 3 to 8 orders of magnitude depending on the connectivity of the wetting layer.