TY - JOUR
T1 - Digital rock analysis to estimate stress-sensitive rock permeabilities
AU - Al Balushi, Faras
AU - Taleghani, Arash Dahi
N1 - Funding Information:
Authors would like to thank Petroleum Fund of American Chemistry Society for supporting this research at The Pennsylvania State University. The authors also thank PSU ICDS for providing the computation resources. Arash Dahi Taleghani presented the idea. Faras Al Balushi developed the model and performed the computations. Arash Dahi Taleghani supervised the findings of this work. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript. The manuscript will not be submitted to other journal for simultaneous consideration. The submitted work is original, without fabrication and has not been published elsewhere in any form or language. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The authors give the consent for the publication of the paper.
Funding Information:
Authors would like to thank Petroleum Fund of American Chemistry Society for supporting this research at The Pennsylvania State University. The authors also thank PSU ICDS for providing the computation resources.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Reservoir deformations due to stress changes may have a substantial impact on the effective flow properties of reservoir rocks, which may potentially impact productivity and injectivity performance. Absolute permeability has been a primary factor in measuring hydraulic conductivity of porous materials. In order to investigate the impact of the granular structure and the extent of intergranular cementation on stress-dependent absolute permeability, we present a workflow that utilizes limited knowledge about the rock sample in the form of micro-Computed Tomography images to simulate stress-induced deformations. This analysis is then followed by Lattice Boltzmann Methods to simulate fluid flow in the deformed medium. While previous works using digital rocks ignored the impact of intergranular cements, we should consider the impact of these cements on the stress sensitivity of absolute permeability of the rock. It is notable that changes in the rock properties like the nature of stress would be a continuous change, so measurements at few stress points may not be enough to describe the overall response in any arbitrary loadings. Despite empirical formulae that are limited to few measurements, we proposed a method based on the equation of states to estimate rock permeability through three independent strain invariants. Digital rock physics, finite element analysis, and Lattice Boltzmann Methods were integrated to obtain a quick estimation of the rock permeability using micro-CT images without the need for repetitive laboratory experiments. Our results show that absolute permeability decreases significantly with increasing first and third strain invariants while it slightly increases with the second strain invariant. The stress sensitivity of absolute permeability was found to be negatively correlated with Young's modulus of the intergranular cement. We observed that incorporating more intergranular cement will make the absolute permeability more sensitive to stress changes.
AB - Reservoir deformations due to stress changes may have a substantial impact on the effective flow properties of reservoir rocks, which may potentially impact productivity and injectivity performance. Absolute permeability has been a primary factor in measuring hydraulic conductivity of porous materials. In order to investigate the impact of the granular structure and the extent of intergranular cementation on stress-dependent absolute permeability, we present a workflow that utilizes limited knowledge about the rock sample in the form of micro-Computed Tomography images to simulate stress-induced deformations. This analysis is then followed by Lattice Boltzmann Methods to simulate fluid flow in the deformed medium. While previous works using digital rocks ignored the impact of intergranular cements, we should consider the impact of these cements on the stress sensitivity of absolute permeability of the rock. It is notable that changes in the rock properties like the nature of stress would be a continuous change, so measurements at few stress points may not be enough to describe the overall response in any arbitrary loadings. Despite empirical formulae that are limited to few measurements, we proposed a method based on the equation of states to estimate rock permeability through three independent strain invariants. Digital rock physics, finite element analysis, and Lattice Boltzmann Methods were integrated to obtain a quick estimation of the rock permeability using micro-CT images without the need for repetitive laboratory experiments. Our results show that absolute permeability decreases significantly with increasing first and third strain invariants while it slightly increases with the second strain invariant. The stress sensitivity of absolute permeability was found to be negatively correlated with Young's modulus of the intergranular cement. We observed that incorporating more intergranular cement will make the absolute permeability more sensitive to stress changes.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.compgeo.2022.104960
DO - 10.1016/j.compgeo.2022.104960
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85136461798
SN - 0266-352X
VL - 151
JO - Computers and Geotechnics
JF - Computers and Geotechnics
M1 - 104960
ER -