Objectives

The characterization of fluid flow in low permeability porous materials remains a challenge nowadays. Low permeability media may classically include materials with a permeability lower than about 0.1 mD. Different areas are concerned among them geological sciences (cap rocks like clays, shales and salt rocks, tight reservoir rocks, volcanic, crystalline and metamorphic rocks), material sciences (synthetic porous materials such as concrete and glass, in particular when used for confining radioactive waste) and biological sciences (bones for example).

Several laboratories worldwide will measure the permeability of a single low permeability material selected for the benchmarking, using their preferred technique. A range of different methods will be covered by the benchmark:

direct methods (including steady-state, transient pulse and oscillatory techniques),
indirect methods (permeability derived from "proxys"),
models using microstructural data.

Expected outcomes of the benchmark:

to compare the results for a given method,
to compare the results between different methods,
to analyse the precision of each method,
to gather information on the know-how in each laboratory,
to study the influence of experimental conditions, especially the type of fluid,
to discuss the relevance of indirect methods and models,
to suggest good practice for low permeability measurements.