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Summary

A new algorithm has been described that simulates mercury intrusion porosimetry in two dimensions. The algorithm has an extremely simple form because it operates on a digitized pixel lattice. It has been shown that the "ink-bottle" pore effect is ubiquitous even in the very simple circular particle model described in this paper, and is probably always present when there is randomness in the pore space. The experimental result of Katz and Thompson [4], that the threshold diameter d_c occurs at the inflection point of the cumulative mercury intrusion curve, has been confirmed for the 2-d circular model. Simple lattice ideas have been shown to accurately describe the effects on the value of d_c of varying the porosity and particle size in the circular model, and may have application to 3-d systems.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mark O. Robbins for a useful conversation, and for pointing out the problem of using mercury spheres in three dimensions.