Representative elementary volume of rock using X-ray microcomputed tomography: A new statistical approach

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Geofluids

ISSN

14688115

Volume

2020

Publisher

Wiley / Hindawi

School

School of Engineering

RAS ID

35285

Funders

Australian National Low Emissions Coal Research and Development Australian Federal Government

Comments

Rahman, T., Ramandi, H. L., Roshan, H., & Iglauer, S. (2020). Representative elementary volume of rock using X-ray microcomputed tomography: A new statistical approach. Geofluids, 2020, article 8866486. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8866486

Abstract

© 2020 Taufiq Rahman et al. Rock heterogeneity is a key parameter influencing a range of rock properties such as fluid flow and geomechanical characteristics. The previously proposed statistical techniques were able to rank heterogeneity on a qualitative level to different extents; however, they need to select a threshold value for determination of representative elementary volumes (REV), which in turn makes the obtained REV subjective. In this study, an X-ray microcomputed tomography (μCT) technique was used to obtain images from different porous media. A new statistical technique was then used to compute REV, as a measure of heterogeneity, without the necessity of defining a threshold. The performance of the method was compared with other methods. It was shown that the calculated sum of the relative errors of the proposed method was lowest compared to the other statistical techniques for all tested porous media. The proposed method can be applied to different types of rocks for more accurate estimation of a REV.

DOI

10.1155/2020/8866486

Access Rights

free_to_read

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