Universal scaling of fluid permeability for sphere packings

Results from the numerical simulation of Stokes flow through random packings of nonoverlapping or overlapping sphers and a scaling ansatz are used to obtain universal curves for the fluid permeability. The scaling ansatz is motivated by previous analysis of rigorous bounds on the permeability. Excellent agreement was found for a variety of model microstructures of porous media in the low and high porosity regimes. Experimentally obtained permeabilities of several sandstones were found to agree well with our universal curve.