There is a wide range of evidence to suggest that permeability can
be constrained through of induced polarization measurements. For
clean sands and sandstones, current mechanistic models of induced
polarization predict a relationship between the low-frequency time
constant inferred from induced polarization measurements and the
grain diameter. A number of observations do, however, disagree with
this and indicate that the observed relaxation behavior is rather
governed by the so-called dynamic pore radius L. To test this hypothesis,
we have developed a set of new scaling relationships, which allow
the relaxation time to be computed from the pore size and the permeability
to be computed from both the Cole-Cole time constant and the formation
factor. Moreover, these new scaling relationships can be also used
to predict the dependence of the Cole-Cole time constant as a function
of the water saturation under unsaturated conditions. Comparative
tests of the proposed new relationships with regard to various published
experimental results for saturated clean sands and sandstones as
well as for partially saturated clean sandstones, do indeed confirm
that the dynamic pore radius L is a much more reliable indicator
of the observed relaxation behavior than grain-size-based models.