Effects of pore type and size on elastic parameters of rock using digital rock modeling

Elastic parameters play an important role on seismic wave velocity especially in carbonate rocks. Pore space geometry, pore type and pore size distributions highly affect such parameters. Therefore, knowledge about pore space characteristics can be helpful for interpretation of elastic wave velocity and parameters. This study aims to use digital rock modeling and generate synthetic samples with known pore space structure to explore pore type and size effects. Pore aspect ratio (the ratio of small to big radius of pore) is used to define different pore types. A circular, elliptical and linear pore shape can be defined using 1, 0.1 and 0.01 value of aspect ratio. Theoretical methods, developed in this regard, are based on differential effective medium and are used to analytically compute effective elastic parameters of such a medium. Constructing synthetic samples in laboratory with known pore structure is also problematic. However, we used digital rock modeling as a flexible method to generate synthetic sample with known pore type and size.