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Published May 17, 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

Connecting microstructural attributes and permeability from 3D tomographic images of in situ shear-enhanced compaction bands using multiscale computations

Abstract

Tomographic images taken inside and outside a compaction band in a field specimen of Aztec sandstone are analyzed by using numerical methods such as graph theory, level sets, and hybrid lattice Boltzmann/finite element techniques. The results reveal approximately an order of magnitude permeability reduction within the compaction band. This is less than the several orders of magnitude reduction measured from hydraulic experiments on compaction bands formed in laboratory experiments and about one order of magnitude less than inferences from two-dimensional images of Aztec sandstone. Geometrical analysis concludes that the elimination of connected pore space and increased tortuosities due to the porosity decrease are the major factors contributing to the permeability reduction. In addition, the multiscale flow simulations also indicate that permeability is fairly isotropic inside and outside the compaction band.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Geophysical Union. Received 8 April 2011; revised 12 April 2011; accepted 13 April 2011; published 17 May 2011. This research has been partly funded by the Geoscience Research Program of the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DE-FG02-08ER15980. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Nicolas Lenoir for providing the tomographic images of the Aztec Sandstone. We are also very grateful to Aaron Packman and Cheng Chen for valuable discussion on the lattice Boltzmann method. PE acknowledges John Hooker for assistance with SEM imaging, and the FRAC industrial consortium for financial support.

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