Wenzheng Yue

By Wenzheng Yue and Yong Wang

In this chapter, three-dimensional digital rock models can be constructed by the micron X-ray computed tomography (CT). Then, lattice gas automata was applied to simulate the flow of electrical current in the saturated digital rocks to reveal the non-Archie relation of resistivity index and water saturation (I-Sw). The flow of single-phase Newtonian fluid in pore space had been studied with LBM for calculating the absolute permeability. Moreover, we have developed a model based on digital rock to simulate thermal neutrons transporting for imaging the anisotropy of pore structure. The advantages of the model over traditional methods indicate that it can simultaneously consider both the separation of matrix and pore and the distribution of mineral components. The results of numerical simulation with Monte Carlo are in good agreement with the pore distribution from X-ray CT, which can further verify the validity of the new model. In contrast to the conventional conclusion, we find that the porosity calculated with neutron data can be affected by the anisotropy. Therefore, a new formula to relate the resolution of array detectors to the quality of imaging, had been proposed to analyze the critical resolution and to optimize the number of neutrons in each simulation.

Part of the book: Computed Tomography