Electromagnetic rock properties’ characterization and modeling using 3D micro-CT rock images

ABSTRACT

This paper mainly focuses on the electromagnetic modeling aspect of the digital rock physics to understand the relationship between the micro-structures and contents within the structure to their electrical properties. This is achieved by using the 3D rock micro-CT images and performing electromagnetic modeling using the 3D numerical mixing law (finite difference method based), which is a robust numerical method with high efficiency. Based on the results of this investigation, one can establish the relationship between the rock structure/porous space-filling materials and the buck electrical properties, such as the permittivity and the conductivity. Two different 3D rock (sandstone and dacite) images with different image reconstruction processes were used to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of this method. Additionally, single-pole Debye model was also used to be compared with our results to further validate our proposed numerical method and also provide a potential approach to predict the oil saturation for future research study.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital rock physics
• electrical properties
• finite difference
• numerical modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mengping Yu

Mengping Yu was born in Mianyang, Sichuan Province, China, in 1992. She received the BS degree in the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in 2015. She is currently working toward the PhD degree at the University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA, under Prof. Ji Chen’s advising. Her current research interests include Digital Rock Physics in electromagnetic modeling, especially the 3D numerical mixing law for various applications.

Dagang Wu

Dagang Wu received the BSc and MSc degrees from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, and the PhD degree from the University of Houston, Houston, TX, in 1999, 2002, and 2006, respectively, all in electrical engineering. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the center for subsurface modeling and characterizations, University of Houston. His main research interests include computational electromagnetics, inverse algorithms, and formation evaluations of wireline/logging-whiledrilling/measure-while-drilling resistivity logging tools.

Yanjun Chen

Yanjun Chen received the BS degree in applied geophysics from China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China, in 1998, the MS degree in mechatronic engineering and the PhD degree in Control Science and Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, in 2006 and 2012 respectively. From 1998 to 2003, he was a geophysics engineer in BGP, Zhuozhou, China. Since March 2012, he has been an associate professor with School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an Shiyou University, Xi’an, China. His research interests include fast algorithms in computational electromagnetics and their applications in well logging, machine learning for oilfield data analytics.

Hanming Wang

Hanming Wang received the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA, in 1999. He is a Research Scientist with the Chevron Energy Technology Company, San Ramon, CA, USA. He started his career in 1992 as an Assistant Professor with China Petroleum University. In 1999, he joined the Sugar Land Formation Evaluation Center, Schlumberger, as a Research Scientist/Tool Physicist. He joined the Chevron Energy Technology Company in 2008 as a Resistivity Logging Expert. His main research interests are new tool concept study, sensor design/modeling, data processing, inversion, formation evaluation, and geo-steering. He holds 11 U.S. patents and has authored or coauthored more than 50 journal and conference papers. Dr Wang is an honorary Professor with China Petroleum University and an Adjunct Professor with the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the distinguished technical achievement from SWPLA. Ji Chen (SM’10) received the BS degree from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, the MS degree from McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, in 1994, and the PhD degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, IL, USA, in 1998, all in electrical engineering. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. His research interests include microprocessor full chip-level interconnect extraction, wireless communication system-on-chip interconnect characterization, computer system EMC/EMI modeling, signal integrity analysis, and bioelectromagnetics with applications to MRI systems. Dr Chen is received the ORISE Fellowship in 2006 and the Motorola Engineering Award in 2000.