Structure-property Relationships from Digital Images: The Influence of Morphology on Physical Properties of Reservoir Rock

The physical properties of complex disordered materials depend on 3D microstructure. Although structure has, to date, defied accurate description, scientists and engineers over a wide range of disciplines are required to estimate the effective properties of materials from poorly defined structural information. In the absence of realistic structural descriptions, existing methodolgies for estimating the properties of disordered materials are limited to overly simplistic representations of microstructure In this work additive measures of morphology are used to characterise the structure of digitised model structures as well as actual reservoir rock. Accurate calculations of conductive and elastic properties directly from tomographic images are achieved by estimating and minimising several sources of numerical error. It is shown that measurements of properties based on microtomographic images are more accurate than those based on conventional theories for disordered materials.