The development and application of a strategy are presented, for estimating the
full tensor of hydraulic permeability of porous media, without any a priori assumption on
the principal directions. A comprehensive description of the X-ray tomographic and image
analysis techniques is drawn for the quantitative morphological characterization of the pore
space. Pore-scale Direct Numerical Simulation is used to compute the velocity and pressure
fields in the digital pore space, reconstructed from high-resolution X-ray tomography. A
commercial Finite Volume fluid dynamic solver is used, which operates on voxel-based
computational meshes. The proposed methodology is validated by reproducing literature
results on monodisperse periodic arrays of spheres. The hydraulic permeability of real-life
porous media, characterized by highly complex morphology, is compared with laboratory
experimental measurements.
