Anna Herring, assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Tennessee Knoxwill (USA), will give the Pretty Porous Science Lecture #76 on the topic "Topological Analysis of Porous Geomaterial Microstructures: Links to Fluid Transport and Trapping".
Date: 28 May 2026
Time: 4 pm
Title: "Topological Analysis of Porous Geomaterial Microstructures: Links to Fluid Transport and Trapping"
Speaker: Ass. Prof. Anna Herring, University of Tennessee Knoxwill (USA)
Location: Multi Media Lab, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 61, 70569 Stuttgart
Abstract
When multiple immiscible fluids reside together within porous rocks or soils, their distribution is controlled by fluid-fluid-solid interfacial interactions and the microscale 3D architecture of the geologic media. These systems arise in many natural and engineered processes in geologic systems; e.g., rainfall infiltration into soils, enhanced oil recovery, geologic carbon dioxide sequestration, and remediation of pollutants in soils and groundwater. Fluid mobility and trapping dictates the large-scale flow of fluids in subsurface formations, but these processes are fundamentally dictated by pore features with length scales on the order of microns.
This talk will illustrate how topological analysis of the internal pore space architecture of porous rocks, and of the fluid distributions within the pore space, can be utilized to inform understanding and predictions of petrophysical properties such as capillary trapping capacity and efficiency. The talk will cover classic measures of topology as well as persistent homology, a topological data analysis technique that measures critical length scales of topological features as well as their frequencies. The capability to link topology and geometry results in a powerful analytical tool, recently used to develop a universal capillary trapping relationship for multiple sandstone types; and to identify critical heterogeneities limiting fluid invasion. Links between fluid topology and other petrophysical measures — wettability, permeability -- will also be highlighted.
About Anna Herring
Anna Herring is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2010); and MS (2012) and PhD (2015) degrees in Environmental Engineering from Oregon State University. She then spent several years at the Australian National University where she conducted research as a postdoc and as an Australian Research Council “Discovery” Early Career Award research fellow. Her research is largely experimental and is based on highly-resolved visualization of fluid (gas, liquid, and supercritical phase) flows and reactive transport within porous media. She applies her studies to enable optimization of technologies to fight climate change: preventing greenhouse gas build-up in the atmosphere by storing carbon dioxide in permeable underground geologic formations, and in useful solid mineral forms.