Transport in Porous Media 44: 205218, 2001.

c 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

205
General Anisotropic Effective Medium Theory for
the Effective Permeability of Heterogeneous
Reservoirs
P. A. FOKKER
Netherlands Institute of Applied Geoscience TNO, P.O. Box 80015, 3508 TA Utrecht,
The Netherlands, e-mail: p.fokker@nitg.tno.nl
(Received: 7 September 1999; in nal form: 10 December 1999)
Abstract. One of the techniques to calculate the effective property of a heterogeneous medium is
the effective medium theory. The present paper presents a general mathematical formulation for the
effective medium approximation using a self-consistent choice of the effective permeability, to apply
it to the case of a general anisotropic 2D medium and to the case of a 3D isotropic medium with
randomly oriented ellipsoidal inclusions. The 2D results are compared with analytical results and
with a homogenization technique with good result. The 3D correlations are used to derive percolation
thresholds in two-phase systems with a large permeability contrast, which are compared to numerical
results from the literature, also with good results.
Key words: upscaling, effective medium theory, effective permeability, fracture network.
Nomenclature
a ratio of short and long axis of ellipse.
E
0
tensor replacing G
0
in G
0
(p) for ellipsoid in reference medium.
g
0
Green function for reference mobility
0
.
G
0
integral operator with kernel G
ij
.
G
ij

2
g
0
/r
i
r
j
.
I identity tensor.
k permeability.
k
frac
equivalent fracture permeability.
n volume density of fractures.
P pore pressure.
P
0
pore pressure solution for reference mobility
0
.
p polarization.
q specic discharge vector.
S co-ordinate transformation tensor.
polarizability tensor.

0
.
mobility k/.

0
reference mobility.
206 P. A. FOKKER

effective mobility.
uid viscosity.
1. Introduction
The determination of the effective permeability of a heterogeneous system is a
classical problem both in the water industry and in the oil and gas industry. Several
techniques for this upscaling are available; Renard and de Marsily (1997), limit-
ing themselves to uniform, single-phase, steady-state ow, give a comprehensive
review.
The two equations that describe ow in porous media are Darcys law and the
mass balance equation, relating the specic discharge vector q and the pressure P.
In the heterogeneous media that we are studying, the permeability is a function
of the position. The literature also shows approaches to derive the permeabil-
ity from the pore structure (Sahimi, 1995) but this will not be the focus of our
present investigation. We will limit ourselves to systems in which the porous sys-
tem is treated as locally homogeneous, with a given, although position-dependent,
permeability.
The upscaling problem is a general problem in physics. Indeed, thermal con-
duction, electrical conduction, electrical insulation and dia- or para-magnetism are
all described by the same equations. Batchelor (1974) gives an overview of the
different phenomena.

He generalizes the various phenomena by introducing G as

the gradient of the conservable quantity (which is the pressure P in a porous me-
dium) and F as the associated ux. The two differential equations which describe
the medium now are a linear relationship between G and F and the conservation
law:
F = K G, F = 0. (1)
The constant tensor of proportionality K is the transport coefcient characteristic
of the medium and is dependent on the position in the medium. For ow through
porous media, K is the uid mobility tensor, the ratio of permeability of the porous
medium and the uid viscosity.
One of the techniques to calculate the effective property of a heterogeneous
medium is the effective medium theory with the self-consistent approximation
(Bruggeman, 1935). Dagan (1979) and Poley (1988) have formulated this the-
ory for isotropic and anisotropic porous media, respectively. Poley limited his
treatment to phases with orientation equal to the orientation of the resulting head
axes of the permeability. The present paper extends his analysis to include phases
with different orientations and independent orientation of the effective permeability

When Batchelor speaks about a porous medium, he introduces a heterogeneity in the viscos-
ity, but does not take into account capillary effects. He does not deal with a distribution of the
permeability.
GENERAL ANISOTROPIC EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY 207
anisotropy. The mathematical formulation has been inspired by the treatment of
Stroud (1975).
There is also a network representation of the effective medium theory, designed
to simulate porous systems from rst principles (Sahimi, 1995). In the present
paper we do not follow this approach as we limit ourselves to systems with a
given permeability on the microscopic scale, implying that we use the original
Bruggeman implementation of the effective medium theory.
2. Mathematical Formulation
Steady-state, laminar, single-phase and incompressible ow in a porous medium
obeys the continuity equation for mass conservation and Darcys law for the spe-
cic discharge vector:
q = 0, q = P (2)
in which the tensor = k/is the mobility tensor. These equations are of the form
of Equation (1).
It is convenient to dene a constant reference mobility
0
, which we will specify
later, and an associated p by the equations
q =
0
P p, p =
_

0
_
P = P, (3)
p is the equivalent of a polarization in dielectrics and describes the deviation of q
from its solution with the reference mobility. Substituting Equation (3) in Equa-
tion (2) yields

_

0
P
_
+ p =

r
i
_

0
ij
P
r
j
+ p
i
_
= 0. (4)
With the help of Green function theory we can rewrite the differential equa-
tion (4) into an integral equation. We dene the Green function in the usual manner
by [
0
g
0
(r)] = (r), which is the well-known solution of the pressure
eld around a point source. Taking for the boundary condition a constant pres-
sure gradient P
0
at innity, and treating p as the source distribution for the
pressure eld, we arrive at
P(r) = P
0
r
_
R
3
g
0
(r r

)[

p](r

) dr

,
P(r) = P
0

_
R
3
[

g
0
(r r

)] p(r

) dr

= P
0
G
0
(p) (5)
with G
0
the integral operator with kernel G
0
ij
(r) =
2
g
0
(r)/r
i
r
j
. Equation (5)
is an implicit equation for the pressure gradient P, as p depends on P (Equa-
tion (3)).
208 P. A. FOKKER
In the effective medium theory the heterogeneous medium around one inclusion
is taken homogeneous with the reference mobility
0
, so the integration over R
3
reduces to an integration over the inclusion. When the inclusions are ellipsoids, it is
known (Carlslaw and Jaeger, 1959) that the polarization and the pressure gradient
inside the ellipsoid are constant, therefore p can be taken outside the integral. The
resulting integral of G
0
ij
over the ellipsoidal volume can be evaluated analytically,
yielding E
0
ij
, and the integral operation with G
0
reduces to a simple tensor product
with E
0
:
G
0
(p) = E
0
p (6)
in which the constant tensor E
0
is only dependent on the reference mobility
0
, the
ratios between the ellipsoid axes and the ellipsoid orientation. The solution to the
pressure gradient inside the ellipsoid can now be written as
P = P
0
E
0
p = P
0
E
0
P,
P = (I + E
0
)
1
P
0
. (7)
The effective mobility

of a heterogeneous medium is the proportionality

tensor between the average pressure gradient and the average ux:

P = q =
0
P + p (8)
in which the averaging is over all the phases and their orientations.
A commonly used choice is a self-consistent effective mobility, in the sense that
it is taken equal to the reference mobility:

=
0
. This makes p zero. Insertion
of the expression for p, Equation (3) and of the solution of the pressure gradient
(7) into this criterion gives
p = (I + E
0
)
1
P
0
= 0. (9)
The pressure gradient at the boundaries, P
0
, is an as yet unspecied constant
vector and can therefore be taken outside the averaging brackets. Introducing ,
the equivalent of the polarizability by p = P
0
, we see that the average of this
tensor must vanish:
= (I + E
0
)
1
= 0 (10)
in which the averaging is again over all the phases and their orientations. This
relationship implicitly gives the self-consistent effective medium approximation
(SCEMA) for the effective permeability of a heterogeneous system. In the follow-
ing section we will evaluate the effective mobility for a number of scenarios. The
required expressions for in an anisotropic 2D medium with elliptical inclusions
and for an isotropic 3D medium with inclusions which are ellipsoids of revolution
are given in the Appendix.
GENERAL ANISOTROPIC EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY 209
3. Application of the Self-consistent Effective Medium Theory
to Model Systems
3.1. GENERAL
The effective medium theory as presented here is an extension of the classical
isotropic theory and contains the latter as a special case. It also contains as a special
case the extension by Poley (1988) to an anisotropic collection of ellipsoids all
having the same symmetry axes, and the extension by Stroud (1975) to a collection
of spheres with anisotropic with random orientations. Among the validation of
these theories are the calculation of the effective permeability of a 5050% iso-
tropic distribution of two phases in 2D and of a reservoir with innitely extending
layers. The rst example gives the geometric mean of the permeabilities of the two
phases; the second the arithmetic and harmonic mean for the permeabilities parallel
and perpendicular to the bedding plane, respectively.
3.2. COMPARISON WITH RESULTS FROM A HOMOGENIZATION THEORY
An additional validation is a comparison with results obtained by Zijl and Trykozko
(Personal communication). They use a homogenization technique to compute an
effective permeability for a given distribution of the permeability (Zijl and
Trykozko, 2000). The equations are solved on a nite element mesh in two man-
ners: one (the conformal-nodal method, CN-FEM) by solving for the pressures at
the corners of the mesh, the other (the mixed-hybrid method, MH-FEM) by solving
for the uxes perpendicular to the mesh element surfaces. The two methods give a
maximum and a minimum to the effective mobility.
Zijl and Trykozko describe a so-called brick pattern, depicted in Figure 1.
To apply the effective medium approximation, the non-connected inclusions are
represented by ellipses with short/long axis ratio a of 0.11. The connected phase
also has a larger correlation length in the horizontal direction than in the vertical
Figure 1. Brick pattern.
210 P. A. FOKKER
Table I. Mobilities parallel and perpendicular to the bricks
resulting from the self-consistent effective medium approx-
imation (SCEMA) and from the two techniques of Zijl and
Trykozko. Phase B is the connected phase
CN-FEM MH-FEM SCEMA

A
= 1;
B
= 0.1

0.4220 0.3955 0.3881

0.1794 0.1733 0.2035

A
= 1;
B
= 0.01

0.1466 0.1202 0.1489

0.0198 0.0188 0.0203

Figure 2. Pattern of non-connected high-permeability phase. The ellipses sketch the equiva-
lent ellipses in the SCEMA.
direction; we model this by assigning to the connected phase an elliptical ratio a =
0.5. With Equation (10) and the expressions worked out in Appendix A, we have
evaluated the resulting effective permeability for a permeability ratio of 10 and
100 between the bricks and the connected phase. The results, and the comparison
with Zijl and Trykozkos results, are represented in Table I. The table shows that
the agreement is within the acceptable range of 15% deviation.
We have also applied the effective medium approximation to Zijl and Trykozkos
case represented in Figure 2. We have modeled the heterogeneous medium by a su-
perposition of three phases: the connected low-permeability phase with a = 1 and
permeability 0.01; and two high-permeability phases (permeability of 1) represen-
ted by the ellipses as depicted in the gure. The effective permeability is calculated
in the same manner by using Equation (10) and the expressions in Appendix A.
The resulting values for the permeabilities are principal values of 0.041 and 0.030
GENERAL ANISOTROPIC EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY 211
at an inclination angle of 67

. These permeabilities are about 30% larger than

those of Zijl and Trykozko and the inclination angle is within 2

. The discrepancy
is presumably due to the fact that the homogenization technique uses a periodic
pattern; with the statistical approach of the effective medium approximation, the
connectivity of the high-permeability phase will be larger.
3.3. APPLICATION TO ISOTROPIC DISTRIBUTIONS OF FRACTURES
In the extreme case that a medium consists of a low-permeability matrix with high-
permeability fractures, the above developed theory can be applied by introducing
very low a, indicating a much larger correlation length in the direction parallel to
the fracture than perpendicular to it. A pattern of fractures in a limited number of
directions can thus be simulated, but it is also possible to simulate a distribution of
fractures over an interval of possible orientations.
An isotropic medium with many randomly oriented fractures will have an iso-
tropic effective mobility. In such a case, the averaging of the tensor for the
fractures, which involves an averaging over the possible orientations, results in
an isotropic matrix. This is simply effectuated by taking
1
3
of the trace (in 3D;
1
2
in
2D). The determination of and its orientation average is given in Appendix B.
We have determined the effective permeability with a number of values for a for
randomly oriented fractures in a 3D isotropic matrix. The elliptical ratio a should
be identied with the width/length ratio of the fracture. For the permeability ratio
we have taken a large value of 10
6
. Only the permeability ratio is of importance,
not their absolute values, but a ratio of this order can be imagined for a matrix
with a permeability of 0.1 mD containing fractures of 100 D permeability. Figure 3
presents the results as a function of the fracture density. For clarity, the curves have
been calculated up to 100% occupation by the fractures, for which of course the
effective permeability equals the fracture permeability.
Effective medium approximations originally were designed for systems in which
either the inclusion density is small or the permeability contrasts are limited. For
small inclusion densities, the effective medium approximation reduces to correla-
tions that can also be determined otherwise (Garboczi and Douglas, 1996).
The most striking feature of Figure 3 is the percolation transition in the curves
and the dependence of its position on a. This transition is a direct outcome of
the theory. The percolation threshold can be calculated for very large permeability
ratios by taking the limit of innite permeability of the fracture phase, and determ-
ining above which concentration the effective permeability becomes innity. For
as much smaller than unity, the percolation transition can thus be determined to
occur at a fracture volume fraction of 1.767a. For spherical inclusions, i.e. for the
isotropic theory, the critical volume fraction is
1
3
. These values are also indicated
in the gure. A comparison of these numbers with results from numerical calcula-
tions (Garboczi et al., 1995) shows that the SCEMA consistently overestimates the
critical volume fraction for percolation: the cited paper has a limiting expression of
212 P. A. FOKKER
Figure 3. Effective permeability of a fractured reservoir for varying fracture volume fraction
and fracture width/length ratio (a). The numbers indicate the as of the different curves; the
squares indicate the theoretical percolation threshold obtained from the SCEMA.
1.27 a for oblate ellipsoids and 0.2854 for spherical inclusions. However, taking
into account that the approximation of the surroundings of an inclusion by a single
mobility becomes worse when the mobility contrast becomes larger, the agreement
is remarkable.
Effective medium approximations do not show the right critical behaviour just
above percolation threshold (Sahimi, 1995). Indeed, the critical exponent for the
permeability near percolation is unity, which is an incorrect result. Far beyond
percolation, however, where the fracture network is well-connected, the approxim-
ation gives better results. We have included in Figure 3 the effective permeability of
an isotropic fracture network with innitely extending fractures. The permeability
of a fracture set with density n in one direction and with neglect of the matrix
permeability is
k = n
_
_
_
k
frac
0 0
0 k
frac
0
0 0 0
_
_
_. (11)
GENERAL ANISOTROPIC EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY 213
The average permeability of an isotropic set with total density n is
1
3
Tr(k) =
2
3
nk
frac
when neglecting the fracture overlap. The comparison with the fracture systems
beyond percolation shows that the SCEMA consistently underestimates the effect-
ive permeability of a fracture network. The asymptotic effective permeability of
the SCEMA for a connected network is
4
9
nk
frac
. An engineering approach to arrive
at better values for the effective permeability as to account for the interaction of the
high-permeability fractures could be to multiply the fracture density with a factor
1.5. At the same time, this makes the prediction of the percolation threshold better
(1.18 a).
4. Concluding Remarks
We have presented the effective medium approximation for the effective permeab-
ility of a heterogeneous porous medium in a general formulation. This formu-
lation has been applied to a general anisotropic 2D mixture of two phases and
has been compared with results obtained with a homogenization technique. The
agreement was very acceptable. The formulation has further been applied to the
case of randomly oriented fractures in a low-permeability matrix in 3D. The low-
concentration limit of the approximation of non-connected fractures equals res-
ults obtained with other analytical techniques. The prediction of the percolation
transition and of the effective permeability of a connected fracture network are
acceptable when considering the approximations made. An engineering approach
has been proposed to improve the quality of the prediction of the permeability of
low-concentration fracture networks.
The effective medium formalism is also applicable to 3D heterogeneous sys-
tems in which the orientation of ellipsoidal inclusions is not random. In this case,
the expression for the polarizability needs to be evaluated for an ellipsoid of
random orientation in a medium with anisotropic reference mobility.
Appendix A. Determination of in a 2D Anisotropic Medium
We take the co-ordinate system x, y to be oriented along the axes of the reference
mobility
0
with the values
1
,
2
. The Green function is
g
0
(x, y) =
1
2

2
ln
_
x
2

1
+
y
2

2
. (12)
We need to calculate the integral of the second derivative of g
0
to determine E
0
over an ellipse which is not necessarily oriented along the axes (x, y). When the
angle between the (x, y) co-ordinate system and the large axis of the ellipse is

we apply a co-ordinate transformation to a new system (x

, y

) by writing
_
x
y
_
= S
_
x

_
, S =
_
cos

sin

sin

cos

_
. (13)
214 P. A. FOKKER
In the (x

, y

) system the Green function reads

g
0
(x

, y

) =
1
2

2
ln r

,
r

=
_
1

1
(x

cos

sin

)
2
+
1

2
(x

sin

+ y

cos

)
2
. (14)
Carrying out the integration over the ellipse, we have for E
0
in the co-ordinate
system oriented along the ellipse:
E
0
11

=
1
2
A +
_
2a

2
_
Ab

+ aBc

b
2
+ c
2
,
E
0
12

= E
0
21

=
1
2
B +
_
2a

2
_
Bb

+ aCc

b
2
+ c
2
,
E
0
22

=
1
2
C +
_
2a

2
_
Cb

+ Bc

/a
b
2
+ c
2
(15)
with
a

=
_
1 + a
2
_
_
1

1
+
1

2
_
+
_
1 a
2
_
_
1

2
_
cos 2

,
b

=
_
1 a
2
_
_
1

1
+
1

2
_
+
_
1 + a
2
_
_
1

2
_
cos 2

,
c

= 2a
_
1

2
_
sin 2

,
A =
cos
2

1
+
sin
2

2
=
1
2
__
1

1
+
1

2
_
+ cos 2

_
1

2
__
,
B = sin

cos

_
1

1
_
=
1
2
sin 2

_
1

1
_
,
C =
sin
2

1
+
cos
2

2
=
1
2
__
1

1
+
1

2
_
+ cos 2

_
1

1
__
. (16)
GENERAL ANISOTROPIC EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY 215
When the effective medium is isotropic, the expression for E
0

becomes
E
0
2D

=
1

0
_
_
_
a
1 + a
0
0
1
1 + a
_
_
_
. (17)
E
0

is transformed back to the (x, y) co-ordinate system by

E
0
= SE
0

S
1
(18)
and the polarizability tensor is calculated for each phase by
=
_
I + E
0

_
1
. (19)
Appendix B. Ellipsoidal Inclusions in an Isotropic 3D Reference Medium
We limit ourselves to ellipsoids of revolution, ellipsoids, which can be described
using one parameter, a, that designs the ratio of the length of the axis of rotational
symmetry to the length of the other two. Oblate ellipsoids have a smaller than 1,
prolate ellipsoids have a larger than 1, spheres have a equal to 1.
The expressions for the Green function g
0
(r), G
0
(r) and their Fourier trans-
forms are
g
0
(r) =
1
4
0
r
, g
0
(k) =
1

0
k
2
,
G
0
ij
(r) =
1
4
0
r
3
_
3r
i
r
j
r
2

ij
_
,

G
0
ij
(k) =
k
i
k
j

0
k
2
. (20)
The integral of G
0
ij
over an ellipsoidal volume can be evaluated analytically
using the Fourier transform. We choose a co-ordinate system with the r
3
axis the
revolution axis of the ellipsoid. The scaled expectation for , f (r), then exhibits
ellipsoidal symmetry with respect to the ellipsoidal co-ordinate
2
= r
2
1
+ r
2
2
+
(r
3
/a)
2
, and the Fourier transform

f (k) has ellipsoidal symmetry with respect to
s
2
= k
2
1
+k
2
2
+(ak
3
)
2
. Now, we can write for the integral the corresponding integral
in the k-space:
_
G
0
ij
(r)f (r) dr =
1
8
3
_

G
0
ij
(k)

f(k) dk
=
1
8
3

0
_
k
i
k
j
k
2
1
+ k
2
2
+ k
2
3

f (k) dk. (21)

We apply a co-ordinate transformation:
k
1
= s cos sin = s
1
, k
2
= s sin sin = s
2
,
k
3
=
s
a
cos = s
3
,
(k
1
, k
2
, k
3
)
(s, , )
=
s
2
sin
a
(22)
216 P. A. FOKKER
and we write
E
0
ij
=
_
G
0
ij
(r)f (r) dr
=
1
8
3

0
_
k
i
k
j
k
2

f (k) dk
=
1
8
3

0
_
2
0
d
_

0
d

2
sin
_

0
ds
s
2

f (s)
a
=
1

0
__
2
0
d
_

0
d

2
sin
_

_
1
8
3
_

0
ds
s
2

f (s)
a
_
2
0
d
_

0
d
sin
4
_
=
1
4
0
__
2
0
d
_

0
d

2
sin
__
1
8
3
_
k-space

f (k) dk
_
=
1
4
0
__
2
0
d
_

0
d

2
sin
_
f (0)
=
1
4
0
_
2
0
d
_

0
d

2
sin . (23)
This integral can be evaluated analytically and yields a diagonal tensor E
0
with
E
0
11
= E
0
22
. We have
E
0
11
= E
0
22
=
1
4
0
_
1
1
1 y
2
1 by
2
dy =
h
1
(a)
2
0
,
E
0
33
=
1
2
0
_
1
1
y
2
a
2
_
1 by
2
_ dy =
h
2
(a)

0
, b =
a
2
1
a
2
(24)
in which the functions h
1
and h
2
are given by
h
1
(a) =
_
1
0
1 y
2
1 by
2
dy
=
_

1
b
__

b +
_

1
b
_
arctan

b 1
_
, a < 1,
2
3
, a = 1,
1
b
_
1
1
2
_
_
1
b

b
_
ln
1 +

b
1

b
_
, a > 1,
GENERAL ANISOTROPIC EFFECTIVE MEDIUM THEORY 217
h
2
(a) =
_
1
0
y
2
a
2
(1 by
2
)
dy = 1 h
1
(a)
=
_

_
1
a
2
b
_
1
_
1
b
arctan

b
_
, a < 1,
1
3
, a = 1,
1
a
2
b
_
1 +
1
2
_
1
b
ln
1 +

b
1

b
_
, a > 1.
(25)
Insertion of the expression for E
0
gives a polarizability
=
_
I + E
0

_
1
= 2
0

_
_
_
_
_
_
_
1
2
0
+ h
1

0 0
0
1
2
0
+ h
1

0
0 0
1
2
0
+ 2h
2

_
_
_
_
_
_
_
(26)
and the average for randomly oriented ellipsoids is
1
3
times the trace of this matrix:

=
2
3

_
2
2
0
+ h
1

+
1
2
0
+ 2h
2

_
. (27)
For spherical inclusions with a = 1 we have
E
0
=
1
3
0
I, (28)
and we recover the Bruggeman correlation:
_

0

2
0
+
_
= 0. (29)
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