Simulation and Validation of Porosity and Permeability of Synthetic and Real Rock Models Using Three-Dimensional Printing and Digital Rock Physics

Abstract

A standard digital rock physics workflow aims to simulate petrophysical properties of rock samples using few millimeter size subsets scanned with X-ray microtomography at a high resolution of around 1 μm. The workflow is mainly based on image analysis and simulation procedures at a subset scale leading to potential uncertainties and errors that cannot be quantified experimentally. To overcome the gap between scales, we propose to integrate three-dimensional (3D) printing technology to generate enlarged subsets at a scale where experimental measurements are feasible to validate simulated results. In this study, we 3D printed synthetic and real samples and compared digital and experimental rock properties. The most challenging phase in the workflow consists of the difficulties encountered while cleaning the 3D printed samples to remove the support material. Results for subsets extracted from synthetic, sandstone, and carbonate samples showed good agreement between digital and experimental measurements for porosity values less than 12% and a range of permeability values between 100 and 2000 mD.

Real-Size Reconstruction of Porous Media Using the Example of Fused Filament Fabrication 3D-Printed Rock Analogues

“…In the studies [29,30], it is noted that the main similarity criteria are associated with the reconstruction of the internal structure of the core, namely porosity, permeability, and density. In article [31], the authors discuss the results of the study of petrophysical properties of specimens manufactured using SLA and PolyJet technology.…”

“…The SLA-manufactured specimen manifested a porosity of 7.45% and an effective porosity of 5.22% compared to 10.02% and 6.25% of the core, respectively. A similar study was performed in [29,43], where specimens of enlarged segments of carbonate rock and sandstone models were produced using PolyJet and SLA technologies. The results of the porosity and permeability measurements showed high consistency between specimens and cores (porosity deviation up to 1%, permeability up to 50%).…”

Size effects in the uniaxial compressive properties of 3D printed models of rocks: an experimental investigation

“…Recently, to explore the effect of internal discontinuous structures on mechanical behaviors, three-dimensional (3D) printing technology has created advantageous conditions for the preparation of complex structural models of rocks (Ju et al 2019(Ju et al , 2017Kong et al 2018;Sharafisafa et al 2018;Song et al 2021;Xia et al 2021). 3D printed models of rocks overcome the traditional problems that exist in the study of rock size effects, including difficult sampling, expensive, large differences in the internal structure of rocks, poor generalization of experimental results, and inaccessibility for comparison (Fereshtenejad and Song 2021;Ibrahim et al 2021;Jiang and Zhao 2014). At present, various 3D printing technologies are widely used to prepare 3D-printed rock samples (Borrello et al 2018;Espalin et al 2014;Rajpurohit and Dave 2018), such as fused deposition modeling, stereolithography, and selective laser sintering.…”