ESTIMATION OF EFFECTIVE CONDUCTIVITY OF RANDOM HETEROGENEOUS MEDIA BYDIFFUSION-PROCESSES

A new Monte Carlo (MC) simulation method is developed for estimating t he effective conductivity of random heterogeneous media. The method is based on the Ito formula for differentiable functions of diffusion pr ocesses, the similarity of the functional form of the generators of th ese processes and the operators of the steady state diffusion equation , smooth approximations of the conductivity field of multiphase hetero geneous media, and MC simulation. The article establishes the theoreti cal framework of the proposed method and gives estimates of the effect ive conductivity for a one-dimensional random heterogeneous medium wit h two phases. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(97)0 2521-8].