Pore Scale Simulations of Rock Deformation, Fracture, and Fluid Flow in Three Dimensions

Technical Report · Fri Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/838252· OSTI ID:838252

Wang, Herbert F ^[1]

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1. University of Wisconsin-Madison

The pore-scale examination of rock deformation and fluid flow consisted of three separate tasks. (1) New laboratory measurements were made of poroelastic properties of Berea sandstone and a new method was developed to measure both the poroelastic constants and the hydraulic conductivity on the same sample of rock in a single test. (2) The second task was to develop constitutive theories of elastic and poroelastic properties of dual-porosity rocks and rocks with cracks. The new constitutive relations explain wave-velocity dispersion in fluid-saturated rock and the stiffening of shear modulus when dry rock is saturated. (3) The third task involved pore-scale percolation modeling of two-phase fluid flow in granular media. The model properly simulates fractal geometries of nonwetting clusters and saturations for flow in unstable gradients. The percolation model was coupled with a water-vapor diffusion model to produce saturation maps in a rock core during evaporative drying. The realistic patchy saturation was used in a heuristic model for predicting elastic properties of partially-saturated rock, which mimicked laboratory results.

• Research Organization: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research (ER) (US)
• DOE Contract Number: FG02-98ER14852
• OSTI ID: 838252
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/14852-1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
BIOT THEORY
COMPRESSIBILITY
DEFORMATION
DIFFUSION
DIMENSIONS
DRYING
ELASTICITY
FLUID FLOW
FRACTALS
HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY
INVASION PERCOLATION
MULTIPHASE FLUID FLOW
POROELASTICITY
PORE SCALE
SANDSTONES
SATURATION
SHEAR
SIMULATION
SKEMPTON'S COEFFICIENT
VELOCITY DISPERSION
WATER VAPOR