Hydraulic and acoustic investigation of sintered glass beads

In the present contribution, we are focussing on the hydraulical and acoustical charcterization of sintered glass beads. For the experiments sintered mono-and weakly polydisperse glass bead samples were applied. Depending on the particle size, degree of particle dispersion and sample treatment during the sintering process, the produced cylindircal samples exhibit different hydraulic and acoustic properties. The more general focus of our research lies on the physical behaviour of oil-water emulsions in porous media by means of combined electromagnetic and acoustic wave propagation. For this purpose, a hydraulic multi-task measuring cell was developed. This cell allows carrying out simple hydraulic permeability and challenging ultrasound experiments in porous materials saturated with Pickering emulsions. In the first phase of our experiments, hydraulical and acoustical measurements of cylindrical sintered glass bead samples were performed in order to determine their intrinsic permeabilities and effective ultrasound velocities. The intrinsic permeability ks , a coupling parameter between the solid matrix and the pore fluid, has a huge influence on wave propagation in fluid-saturated porous media. For the assessment of permeabilities, particle size distributions and porosities of the investigated glass beads were determined.