含孔隙介质的分层半空间表面瑞利波的衰减特性

以分层半空间内部含有一层孔隙介质为物理模型进行数值计算,研究半空间表面瑞利波的传播和衰减特性.为更加接近实际,结合瑞利波的激发特性,确定了瑞利波的主衰减曲线,并主要以此进行规律分析.针对速度递增和含低速层这两种典型的地质模型,讨论了瑞利波的传播衰减在不同地质模型下的特性,并分析了各自的规律.结果表明,在这两种模型下瑞利波的主衰减曲线都受孔隙介质所处空间位置影响产生比较明显的变化,但衰减系数极大值对应的波长与模型的表层厚度存在较明显的线性对应关系,利用这一关系,可以在实际勘探中快速得到表层介质厚度.另外,通过对比分析还可以看到,瑞利波主衰减曲线随孔隙介质的孔隙度和渗透率的变化都强于主频散曲线的变化,表明衰减曲线对孔隙度和渗透率的变化更加敏感,理论上更加适合进行介质参数反演工作.综合对比结果,我们认为瑞利波主衰减曲线中包含了更丰富的介质参数信息,如果能够有效利用,将可以提高瑞利波勘探的准确性和应用范围.

     

The effect of microporosity on transport properties in porous media

Sizeable amounts of connected microporosity with various origins can have a profound effect on important petrophysical properties of a porous medium such as (absolute/relative) permeability and capillary pressure relationships. We construct pore-throat networks that incorporate both intergranular porosity and microporosity. The latter originates from two separate mechanisms: partial dissolution of grains and pore fillings (e.g. clay). We then use the reconstructed network models to estimate the medium flow properties. In this work, we develop unique network construction algorithms and simulate capillary pressure–saturation and relative permeability–saturation curves for cases with inhomogeneous distributions of pores and micropores. Furthermore, we provide a modeling framework for variable amounts of cement and connectivity of the intergranular porosity and quantifying the conditions under which microporosity dominates transport properties. In the extreme case of a disconnected inter-granular network due to cementation a range of saturations within which neither fluid phase is capable of flowing emerges. To our knowledge, this is the first flexible pore scale model, from first principles, to successfully approach this behavior observed in tight reservoirs.     

含两项不混合/单项黏性流体孔隙介质分界面上反透射系数特征研究

弹性孔隙介质分界面上的反透射系数特征,在岩性划分、流体识别、储层边界判识等方面有重要的应用.本文研究上层为含两项不混合黏性流体孔隙介质、下层为含单项黏性流体孔隙介质分界面上的反透射理论.首先根据两种孔隙介质分界面上的能量守恒得到边界条件,再将波函数、位移、应力与应变关系代入边界条件,推导出完全连通孔隙情况下,第一类纵波入射到孔隙介质分界面上的反透射系数方程.通过建立砂岩孔隙介质模型,分别分析不同孔隙流体类型、不同含油饱和度及不同入射角情况下,各类波的反透射系数特征.研究表明,第二、三类纵波反透射系数数值比第一类纵波小多个数量级,且两者对入射角的变化不敏感,但对孔隙流体性质、含油饱和度的变化较敏感,而横波反透射系数特征恰好与此相反;第一类纵波反透射系数特征比较复杂,入射角、孔隙流体的性质及含油饱和度的变化都对其产生影响.不同孔隙流体弹性物性的差异、孔隙介质中含油饱和度的变化及不同入射角引起垂向和切向应力分量的变化都会影响各类波的反透射系数特征,分析这些特征可以为研究储层含油气性提供理论基础.

     

Heat dispersion effect on thermal convection in a porous medium layer

Thermal convection resulting from vertical temperature gradients in porous media is analyzed. The effect of heat dispersion is taken into account. It is found that heat dispersion increases the thermal stability of the flow field and may inhibit the appearance of convection currents, which would appear if dispersion effects are omitted.The longitudinal as well as the lateral dispersivities affect the thermal stability and the dimensions of the convection cells. As a result of the convection currents the horizontal streamlines in the steady state are distorted. The thermal convection exhibits internal waves in the field.     

含混合裂隙、孔隙介质的纵波衰减规律研究

地下多孔介质中的孔隙类型复杂多样,既有硬孔又有扁平的软孔.针对复杂孔隙介质,假设多孔介质中同时含有球型硬孔和两种不同产状的裂隙(硬币型、尖灭型裂隙),当孔隙介质承载载荷时,考虑两种不同类型的裂隙对于孔隙流体压力的影响,建立起Biot理论框架下饱和流体情况含混合裂隙、孔隙介质的弹性波动方程,并进一步求取了饱和流体情况下仅由裂隙引起流体流动时的含混合裂隙、孔隙介质的体积模量和剪切模量,随后,在此基础上讨论了含混合裂隙、孔隙介质在封闭条件下地震波衰减和频散的高低频极限表达式.最后计算了给定模型的地震波衰减和频散,发现地震波衰减曲线呈现"多峰"现象,速度曲线为"多频段"频散.针对该模型分析讨论了渗透率参数、裂隙纵横比参数以及流体黏滞性参数对于地震波衰减和频散的影响,表明三个参数均为频率控制参数.     

Horizontal redistribution of fluids in a porous medium: The role of interfacial area in modeling hysteresis

Recent advances in multi-phase flow theory have shown that the flow of several phases in a porous medium is highly influenced by the interfaces separating these phases. First modeling studies based on this new theory have been performed on a pore scale, as well as on a volume-averaged macro scale using balance equations and constitutive relations that take the role and presence of interfaces into account. However, neither experimental data nor analytical solutions are available on the macro scale so far, although their knowledge is essential for the verification of the new models.     

Seismoelectric measurements in a porous quartz‐sand sample with anisotropic permeability

Seismoelectric coupling coefficients are difficult to predict theoretically because they depend on a large numbers of rock properties, including porosity, permeability, tortuosity, etc. The dependence of the coupling coefficient on rock properties such as permeability requires experimental data. In this study, we carry out a set of laboratory measurements to determine the dependence of seismoelectric coupling coefficient on permeability. We use both an artificial porous “sandstone” sample, with cracks, built using quartz‐sand and Berea sandstone samples. The artificial sample is a cube with 39% porosity. Its permeability levels are anisotropic: 14.7 D, 13.8 D, and 8.3 D in the x‐, y‐, and z‐directions, respectively. Seismoelectric measurements are performed in a water tank in the frequency range of 20 kHz–90 kHz. A piezoelectric P‐wave source is used to generate an acoustic wave that propagates through the sample from the three different (x, y, and z) directions. The amplitudes of the seismoelectric signal induced by the acoustic waves vary with the direction. The highest signal is in the direction of the highest permeability, and the lowest signal is in the direction of the lowest permeability. Since the porosity of the sample is constant, the results directly show the dependence of seismoelectric coefficients on permeability. Seismoelectric measurements with natural rocks are performed using Berea sandstone 500 and 100 samples. Because the Berea samples are nearly isotropic in permeability, the amplitudes of the seismoelectric signals induced in the different directions are the same within the measurement error. Because the permeability of Berea 500 is higher than that of Berea 100, the amplitude of the seismoelectric signals induced in Berea 500 is higher than those in Berea 100. To determine the relative contributions of porosity and permeability on seismoelectric conversion, we carried out an analysis, using Pride (1994) formulation and Kozeny–Carman relationship; the normalized amplitudes of seismoelectric coupling coefficients in three directions are calculated and compared with the experimental results. The results show that the seismoelectric conversion is related to permeability in the frequency range of measurements. This is an encouraging result since it opens the possibility of determining the permeability of a formation from seismoelectric measurements.     

Convective stability analysis of the long-term storage of carbon dioxide in deep saline aquifers

Deep saline aquifers are one of the most suitable geologic formations for carbon sequestration. The linear and global stability analysis of the time-dependent density-driven convection in deep saline aquifers is presented for long-term storage of carbon dioxide (CO₂). The convective mixing that can greatly accelerate the CO₂ dissolution into saline aquifers arises because the density of brine increases upon the dissolution of CO₂ and such a density difference may induce instability. The effects of anisotropic permeability on the stability criteria, such as the critical time for the appearance of convective phenomena and the critical wavelength of the most unstable perturbation, are investigated with linear and global stability analysis. The linear stability analysis provides a sufficient condition for instability while the global stability analysis yields a sufficient condition for stability. The results obtained from these two approaches are not exactly the same but show a consistent trend, both indicating that the anisotropic system becomes more unstable when either the vertical or horizontal permeability increases.     

Numerical simulation of three-dimensional saltwater–freshwater fingering instabilities observed in a porous medium

We consider saltwater–freshwater fingering instabilities in a saturated porous medium. In the first part, we present three-dimensional results obtained from a laboratory experiment using non-invasive imaging. In the second part, we define a set of model problems in which the performed laboratory experiments can be ranged in. Due to its highly non-linear behavior and inevitable modeling errors, a detailed numerical reproduction of the physical concentration measurements cannot be expected. Nevertheless, four criteria have been identified, two quantitative and two qualitative, which facilitate a substantiated comparison of the physical experiment and the numerical simulation. With respect to these criteria a high degree of similarity could be observed. The use of these features allows a deeper understanding of the physical processes and the influence of the initial conditions.     

Transitions in thermal convection with strongly temperature-dependent viscosity in a wide box

Numerical models are systematically presented for time-dependent thermal convection of Newtonian fluid with strongly temperature-dependent viscosity in a two-dimensional rectangular box of aspect ratio 3 at various values of the Rayleigh number Ra_b defined with viscosity at the bottom boundary up to 1.6×10⁸ and the viscosity contrast across the box r_η up to 10⁸. We found that there are two different series of bifurcations that take place as r_η increases. One series of bifurcations causes changes in the behavior of the thermal boundary layer along the surface boundary from small-viscosity-contrast (SVC) mode, through transitional (TR) mode, to stagnant-lid (ST) mode, or from SVC mode directly to ST mode, depending on Ra_b. Another series of bifurcations causes changes in the aspect ratio of convection cells; convection with an elongated cell can take place at moderate r_η (10³–10^5.5 at Ra_b=6×10⁶), while only convection of aspect ratio close to 1 takes place at small r_η and large r_η. The parameter range of r_η and Ra_b for elongated-cell convection overlaps the parameter range for SVC and ST modes and include the entire parameter range for TR mode. In the elongated-ST regime, the lid of highly viscous fluid along the top boundary is not literally ‘stagnant’ but can horizontally move at a velocity high enough to induce a convection cell with aspect ratio much larger than 1.     

A note on benchmarking of numerical models for density dependent flow in porous media

Verification of numerical models for density dependent flow in porous media (DDFPM) by the means of appropriate benchmark problems is a very important step in developing and using these models. Recently, Infinite Horizontal Box (IHB) problem was suggested as a possible benchmark problem for verification of DDFPM codes. IHB is based on Horton–Rogers–Lapwood (HRL) problem. Suitability of this problem for the benchmarking purpose has been investigated in this paper. It is shown that the wavelength of instabilities fails to be a proper criterion to be considered for this problem. However, the threshold of instability formation has been found to be appropriate for benchmarking purpose.     

Analysis of Rayleigh waves in saturated porous elastic media by finite element method

A numerical procedure for the analysis of Rayleigh waves in saturated porous elastic media is proposed by use of the finite element method. The layer stiffness matrix, the layer mass matrix and the layer damping matrix in a layered system are presented for the discretized form of the solid-fluid equilibrium equation proposed by Biot. In order to consider the influence of the permeability coefficient on the behavior of Rayleigh waves, attention is focused on the following states: ‘drained’ state, ‘undrained’ state and the states between two extremes of ‘drained’ and ‘undrained’ states. It is found from computed results that the permeability coefficient exerts a significant effect on dispersion curves and displacement distributions of Rayleigh waves in saturated porous media.     

Nonequilibrium effects in models of three-phase flow in porous media

In this paper we extend to three-phase flow the nonequilibrium formalism proposed by Barenblatt and co-workers for two-phase porous media flow. The underlying idea is to include nonequilibrium effects by introducing a pair of effective water and gas saturations, which are linked to the actual saturations by a local evolution equation. We illustrate and analyze how nonequilibrium effects lead to qualitative and quantitative differences in the solution of the three-phase flow equations.     

Coupling upscaling finite element method for consolidation analysis of heterogeneous saturated porous media

The coupling upscaling finite element method is developed for solving the coupling problems of deformation and consolidation of heterogeneous saturated porous media under external loading conditions. The method couples two kinds of fully developed methodologies together, i.e., the numerical techniques developed for calculating the apparent and effective physical properties of the heterogeneous media and the upscaling techniques developed for simulating the fluid flow and mass transport properties in heterogeneous porous media. Equivalent permeability tensors and equivalent elastic modulus tensors are calculated for every coarse grid block in the coarse-scale model of the heterogeneous saturated porous media. Moreover, an oversampling technique is introduced to improve the calculation accuracy of the equivalent elastic modulus tensors. A numerical integration process is performed over the fine mesh within every coarse grid element to capture the small scale information induced by non-uniform scalar field properties such as density, compressibility, etc. Numerical experiments are carried out to examine the accuracy of the developed method. It shows that the numerical results obtained by the coupling upscaling finite element method on the coarse-scale models fit fairly well with the reference solutions obtained by traditional finite element method on the fine-scale models. Moreover, this method gets more accurate coarse-scale results than the previously developed coupling multiscale finite element method for solving this kind of coupling problems though it cannot recover the fine-scale solutions. At the same time, the method developed reduces dramatically the computing effort in both CPU time and memory for solving the transient problems, and therefore more large and computational-demanding coupling problems can be solved by computers.     

General absorbing boundary conditions for dynamic analysis of fluid-saturated porous media

General absorbing boundary conditions based on Biot's two-phase mixture theory and paraxial approximation is presented for the dynamic analysis of fluid-saturated porous media with isotropic, transverse isotropic, and anisotropic properties. For the last two cases, the equivalent Lame's constants, under conditions of uniqueness, are introduced to facilitate the analytical solutions. The numerical results show that the proposed absorbing boundary can greatly suppress spuriously reflected waves and efficiently model the far field of the system with sufficient accuracy.     

含湿孔隙岩石有效热导率的数值分析

本文采用有限元方法研究含湿孔隙岩石的有效热导率,即随机划分网格并指定材料性质,建立三维含湿孔隙岩石的有限元模型,模型的上下表面施加不同的温度,侧面绝热,计算出总热流,然后结合上下表面的温度梯度计算出岩石的有效热导率.考虑到单个随机模型不一定具有代表性,对给定的孔隙率和饱和度均生成了200种矿物、水、空气随机分布的岩石模型,进行Monte Carlo实验和统计分析,统计分析结果与前人实验结果吻合良好.数值分析结果表明,孔隙岩石的有效热导率与岩石的孔隙率、饱和度、固体矿物组分及孔隙的分布情况有关,数值计算的误差随着网格数目的增加而减小.此有限元方法可以用来估算岩石的有效热导率,在已知组分性质的多矿物岩石物性计算方面有广阔应用前景.     

地震各向异性——多组裂隙对横波偏振的影响

通过对多分量地震资料的分析,我们发现随着频率的增加横波分裂时差减小.对于深部接收的VSP数据来说快横波的偏振方向保持不变,而对于浅层接收的VSP数据来说偏振方向却存在一个最大可以达到20°的旋转.尽管多尺度随机分布微裂隙岩石物理模型已经成功地模拟并解释了横波分裂时差随频率变化的现象,却不能解释与频率相关的横波分裂.据推测,如果微裂隙的排列方向和大裂隙的排列方向不同,利用低频信息获得的偏振方向将指示裂隙主方向,而利用高频信息获得的偏振方向则指示微裂隙方向.在背景多孔隙介质中存在多组裂隙的情况下,推导出垂直入射条件下横波偏振方向的解析式,给出了系统研究横波在介质中传播的方法.研究结果表明,横波偏振方向会随着频率的变化而变化,并且在入射方位、角度一定的条件下,是裂隙方位和密度的函数,这些认识可能有助于揭示观测到的、依赖频率变化的横波偏振现象.     

The effect of heterogeneity on the character of density-driven natural convection of CO2 overlying a brine layer

The efficiency of mixing in density-driven natural-convection is largely governed by the aquifer permeability, which is heterogeneous in practice. The character (fingering, stable mixing or channeling) of flow-driven mixing processes depends primarily on the permeability heterogeneity character of the aquifer, i.e., on its degree of permeability variance (Dykstra-Parsons coefficient) and the correlation length. Here we follow the ideas of Waggoner et al. (1992) [13] to identify different flow regimes of a density-driven natural convection flow by numerical simulation. Heterogeneous fields are generated with the spectral method of Shinozuka and Jan (1972) [13], because the method allows the use of power-law variograms. In this paper, we extended the classification of Waggoner et al. (1992) [13] for the natural convection phenomenon, which can be used as a tool in selecting optimal fields with maximum transfer rates of CO₂ into water. We observe from our simulations that the rate of mass transfer of CO₂ into water is higher for heterogeneous media.     

Topographic forcing of supercritical convection in a porous medium such as the oceanic crust

We have performed laboratory experiments using a Hele-Shaw cell to model a saturated, porous layer with various sinusoidal upper boundaries. Our intent was to determine the range of conditions over which boundary topography can control the pattern of thermal convection within a porous layer, and thereby take the first step toward understanding why heat flow seems correlated with hypsography in many areas of the ocean floor.These experiments indicate that above the critical Rayleigh number, topography does not control the convection pattern, except when the topographic wavelength is comparable to the depth of water penetration. Scaled to the depth of the layer, the convective wavenumbers are restricted to values between 2.5 and 4.8—a range which brackets π, the natural wavenumber for convection in a porous slab with planar, isothermal, impermeable boundaries. Topographies within this range control the circulation pattern perfectly, with downwelling under valleys and upwelling aligned with topographic highs. Other topographies do not force the pattern, although in some cases, the convection wavenumber may be a harmonic of the topographic wavenumber. Unforced circulation cells wander and vary in size, because they are not locked to the topography.For these experiments we employed eight different topographies with non-dimensional wavenumbers between 1.43 and 8.17, and we studied the flow at Rayleigh numbers between zero and five times the critical Rayleigh number. The amplitude of each topography tapered linearly (over a factor of three to six) from one end of the apparatus to the other, and the mean topographic amplitude was 0.05 times the depth of the layer. Under these conditions, amplitude has only a minor effect on the structural form and vigor of supercritical convection.Our results may apply to submarine geothermal systems, sealed by a thin layer of impermeable sediment draped over the basement topography. In this case, the convection wavelength—as measured perhaps by the spatial periodicity of conductive heat flow—may be a good measure of the depth to which water penetrates the crust. Where the circulation correlates with the bottom topography, it may be because the topographic wavelength is comparable to the depth to which water penetrates the porous crust.     

Flow visualization studies of two-phase thermal convection in a porous layer

Summary Two-phase thermal convection has been studied in a porous layer heated from below. A water saturated porous layer was heated so that boiling occurred on the lower boundary. In order to observe flow patterns one lateral dimension of the apparatus was made small. At moderate heat fluxes a water zone overlay a two-phase, steam-water zone. Water velocities and streamlines were obtained as well as the location of the two-phase zone for several heat fluxes. Within the water zone heat transfer took place due to both conduction and convection. In the two-phase zone heat transfer took place due to counterpercolation of steam and water.