Tortuosity 1

Tortuosity
Tortuosity is a property of curve being tortuous (twisted; having many
turns). There have been several attempts to quantify this property.
Tortuosity is commonly used to describe diffusion in porous media,[1]
such as soils and snow.[2]

Tortuosity in 2-D
Subjective estimation (sometimes aided by optometric grading
scales[3]) is often used. A tortuous river (meander of Nowitna River,
Alaska)
The most simple mathematic method to estimate tortuosity is arc-chord
ratio: ratio of the length of the curve (L) to the distance between the
ends of it (C):

Arc-chord ratio equals 1 for a straight line and is infinite for a circle.
Another method, proposed in 1999,[4] is to estimate the tortuosity as integral of square (or module) of curvature.
Dividing the result by length of curve or chord has also been tried.
In 2002 several Italian scientists[5] proposed one more method. At first, the curve is divided into several (N) parts
with constant sign of curvature (using hysteresis to decrease sensitivity to noise). Then the arc-chord ratio for each
part is found and the tortuosity is estimated by:

In this case tortuosity of both straight line and circle is estimated to be 0.

In 1993[6] Swiss mathematician Martin Mchler proposed an analogy: its relatively easy to drive a bicycle or a car in
a trajectory with a constant curvature (an arc of a circle), but its much harder to drive where curvature changes. This
would imply that roughness (or tortuosity) could be measured by relative change of curvature. In this case the
proposed "local" measure was derivative of logarithm of curvature:

However, in this case tortuosity of a straight line is left undefined.

In 2005 it was proposed to measure tortuosity by an integral of square of derivative of curvature, divided by the
length of a curve:[7]

In this case tortuosity of both straight line and circle is estimated to be 0.

In most of these methods digital filters and approximation by splines can be used to decrease sensitivity to noise.
Tortuosity 2

Tortuosity in 3-D
Usually subjective estimation is used. However, several ways to adapt
methods estimating tortuosity in 2-D have also been tried. The methods
include arc-chord ratio, arc-chord ratio divided by number of inflection
points and integral of square of curvature, divided by length of the
curve (curvature is estimated assuming that small segments of curve
are planar).[9] Another method used for quantifying tortuosity in 3D
has been applied in 3D reconstructions of solid oxide fuel cell cathodes
where the Euclidean distance sums of the centroids of a pore were
divided by the length of the pore.[10]

Tortuosity calculation from an x-ray tomography

Applications of tortuosity reconstruction of a porous sandstone (the pores
[8]
are shown) : the color represents the shortest
Tortuosity of blood vessels (for example, retinal and cerebral blood
distance within the pore space from the left limit
vessels) is known to be used as a medical sign. of the image to any point in the pores. Comparing
In mathematics, cubic splines minimize the functional, equivalent to this distance to the straight-line distance shows
that the tortusosity is about 1.5 for this sample.
integral of square of curvature (approximating the curvature as the
second derivative).
In many engineering domains dealing with mass transfer in porous materials, such as hydrogeology or heterogeneous
catalysis, the tortuosity refers to the ratio of the diffusivity in the free space to the diffusivity in the porous
medium[11] (analogous to arc-chord ratio of path). Strictly speaking, however, the effective diffusivity is
proportional to the reciprocal of the square of the geometrical tortuosity[12]
In acoustics and following initial works by Maurice Anthony Biot in 1956, the tortuosity is used to describe sound
propagation in fluid-saturated porous media. In such media, when frequency of the sound wave is high enough, the
effect of viscous drag force between the solid and the fluid can be ignored. In this case, velocity of sound
propagation in the fluid in the pores is non-dispersive and compared with the value of the velocity of sound in the
free fluid is reduced by a ratio equal to the square root of the tortuosity. This has been used for a number of
applications including the study of materials for acoustic isolation, and for oil prospection using acoustics means.
In analytical chemistry applied to polymers and sometimes small molecules tortuosity is applied in Gel permeation
chromatography (GPC) also known as Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC). As with any chromatography it is
used to separate mixtures. In the case of GPC the separation is based on molecular size and it works by the use of
stationary media with appropriately dimensioned pores. The separation occurs because larger molecules take a
shorter, less tortuous path and elute more quickly and smaller molecules can pass into the pores and take a longer,
more tortuous path and elute later.
HVAC makes extensive use of tortuosity in evaporator and condenser coils for heat exchangers, whereas Ultra-high
vacuum makes use of the inverse of tortuosity, which is conductivity, with short, straight, voluminous paths.
Tortuosity 3

References
[1] Epstein, N. (1989), On tortuosity and the tortuosity factor in flow and diffusion through porous media, Chem. Eng. Sci., 44(3), 777 779.
(http:/ / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1016/ 0009-2509(89)85053-5)
[2] Kaempfer, T. U., M. Schneebeli, and S. A. Sokratov (2005), A microstructural approach to model heat transfer in snow, Geophys. Res. Lett.,
32, L21503, (http:/ / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1029/ 2005GL023873)
[3] Richard M. Pearson. Optometric Grading Scales for use in everyday practice. Optometry Today, Vol. 43, No. 20, 2003, ISSN 0268-5485
(http:/ / www. optometry. co. uk/ uploads/ articles/ e022e939c23ddd43951691b84a1efa90_pearson20031017. pdf)
[4] William E. Hart, Michael Goldbaum, Brad Cote, Paul Kube, Mark R. Nelson. Automated measurement of retinal vascular tortuosity.
International Journal of Medical Informatics, Vol. 53, No. 2-3, p. 239-252, 1999 (http:/ / www. cs. sandia. gov/ ~wehart/ Papers/ 1997/
HarGolCotKubNel97-amia. ps. gz)
[5] Enrico Grisan, Marco Foracchia, Alfredo Ruggeri. A novel method for automatic evaluation of retinal vessel tortuosity. Proceedings of the
25th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, Cancun, Mexico, 2003 (http:/ / ieeexplore. ieee. org/ xpls/ abs_all.
jsp?isnumber=28608& arnumber=1279902& count=267& index=227)
[6] M. Mchler, Very smooth nonparametric curve estimation by penalizing change of curvature, Technical Report 71, ETH Zurich, May 1993
(ftp:/ / ftp. stat. math. ethz. ch/ Research-Reports/ 71. ps. gz)
[7] Patasius, M.; Marozas, V.; Lukosevicius, A.; Jegelevicius, D.. Evaluation of tortuosity of eye blood vessels using the integral of square of
derivative of curvature // EMBEC'05: proceedings of the 3rd IFMBE European Medical and Biological Engineering Conference, November
2025, 2005, Prague. - ISSN 1727-1983. - Prague. - 2005, Vol. 11, p. [1-4]
[8] Gommes, C.J., Bons, A.-J., Blacher, S. Dunsmuir, J. and Tsou, A. (2009) Practical methods for measuring the tortuosity of porous materials
from binary or gray-tone tomographic reconstructions. American Institute of Chemical Engineering Journal, 55, 2000-2012 (http:/ / orbi. ulg.
ac. be/ bitstream/ 2268/ 19609/ 1/ 2009 AIchE tortuosity. pdf)
[9] E. Bullitt, G. Gerig, S. M. Pizer, Weili Lin, S. R. Aylward. Measuring tortuosity of the intracerebral vasculature from MRA images. IEEE
Transactions on Medical Imaging, Volume 22, Issue 9, Sept. 2003, p. 1163 - 1171 (http:/ / ieeexplore. ieee. org/ xpls/ abs_all.
jsp?arnumber=1225850)
[10] Gostovic, D., et al., Three-dimensional reconstruction of porous LSCF cathodes. Electrochemical and Solid State Letters, 2007. 10(12): p.
B214-B217. (http:/ / scitation. aip. org/ journals/ doc/ ESLEF6-ft/ vol_10/ iss_12/ B214_1. html)
[11] Watanabe, Y. and Nakashima, Y. (2001) Two-dimensional random walk program for the calculation of the tortuosity of porous media.
Journal of Groundwater Hydrology, 43, 13-22 (http:/ / staff. aist. go. jp/ nakashima. yoshito/ programs/ rw2d. txt)
[12] Gommes, C.J., Bons, A.-J., Blacher, S. Dunsmuir, J. and Tsou, A. (2009) Practical methods for measuring the tortuosity of porous materials
from binary or gray-tone tomographic reconstructions. American Institute of Chemical Engineering Journal, 55, 2000-2012 (http:/ / orbi. ulg.
ac. be/ handle/ 2268/ 19609)
Article Sources and Contributors 4

Article Sources and Contributors

Tortuosity Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=550494522 Contributors: 4crates, Berland, CarrieVS, Edward, Fede Threepwood, Francisco Quiumento, Geometry guy, Gommes,
MartinSchneebeli, Martynas Patasius, Meredyth, Ntk2, Pascal.Tesson, Philmon Cyclone, Point-set topologist, Rausch, Stan J Klimas, Tony Fox, 10 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

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