A novel approach to determine the Biot’s coefficient using X-ray computed tomography
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment
Publisher
Springer
School
School of Engineering / Centre for Sustainable Energy and Resources
RAS ID
38761
Funders
Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Australian Government
Government of Western Australia
Abstract
Linear poroelastic effective stress law is often used to relate in situ total stresses to pore fluid pressure in underground formations. The indirect estimations of effective stress coefficient (Biot coefficient) based on porosity relationships are often not accurate, and therefore the Biot coefficient measurements on retrieved samples using hydro-mechanical laboratory testing is considered. In this study, we propose a new indirect technique to infer the Biot coefficient from micro X-ray computed tomography (XRCT) images of porous granular samples whenever images are available using a simple principle of continuum mechanics. The performance of the method was assessed through a series of experiments conducted on sandstone and unconsolidated sand. The proposed method enables calculating the anisotropy of the Biot coefficient of the sample in three dimensions. We also conducted the conventional hydro-mechanical experiment to validate the obtained Biot coefficient results from the XRCT technique. The proposed technique shows promising results on estimation of the Biot coefficient. The analysis of the images confirms that the method performs well when the connectivity between grains (skeleton structure) can be extracted from XRCT images with enough resolution. The method is also able to (a) estimate the Biot coefficient of both consolidated and unconsolidated sand structure and (b) map the anisotropy of Biot coefficient in three dimensions.
DOI
10.1007/s10064-021-02405-0
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Comments
Salemi, H., Yurikov, A., Lebedev, M., Behnoudfar, P., Rezagholilou, A., Iglauer, S., . . . Sarmadivaleh, M. (2021). A novel approach to determine the Biot’s coefficient using X-ray computed tomography. Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment, 80(10), 7865-7877. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-021-02405-0