Permeability is a physical property quantifying the ease with which a substance, typically a fluid or gas, passes through a continuous medium under a driving force such as a pressure, chemical potential, or concentration gradient. In porous media, permeability characterizes the hydraulic conductance of the pore network and enters Darcy’s law as the proportionality factor between volumetric flux and pressure gradient, with units of area. More generally, permeability can describe transport through membranes, polymers, or geological formations, and is influenced by microstructural parameters including pore size distribution, connectivity, tortuosity, and porosity, as well as fluid properties like viscosity and, in some cases, interaction with the solid matrix.
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