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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1528829
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Petrophysics of Unconventional Oil and Gas View all 10 articles
Research on multi-scale digital core construction of carbonate rock with fractures and caves characteristics : A case study of Dengying Formation carbonate rocks in Sichuan Basin
Provisionally accepted
Geli Li 1 Jianbin Zhao 1
Yuejiao Liu 2* Zhanshan Xiao 1 Shitao Cui 1 Bo Wei 1 Chenjun Zhang 1 Yakun Mao 1 Yang Xia 1 Lei Xu 2
Jianmeng Sun 2 Zuzhi Hu 1- 1 China Petroleum Logging Company Limited, Xi’an, China
- 2 School of Geoscience, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
Carbonate reservoirs characterized by fractures and caves exhibit a complex spatial distribution and significant heterogeneity. The establishment of precise and reliable three-dimensional geological models is imperative to elucidate the influence mechanism of fracture and cave parameters on macroscopic petrophysical properties from a micro scale. This is the foundation and prerequisite for the efficient development of such reservoirs. In this paper, dual-scale CT core scanning data is utilized to adjust the segmentation threshold of high-resolution (small-scale) cores to the segmentation of low-resolution (large-scale) cores. This approach enables the comprehensive characterization of multi-scale porosity in large-scale cores and the realization of multi-scale digital core fusion. A 3D fracture digital core model was generated using a Slice-GAN neural network model and SEM images. A well-developed cave was extracted from low-resolution CT data and used as a cave digital core. Through model superposition, a multi-scale digital core containing fractures and caves was constructed. The reliability of the constructed digital core was verified based on four parameters: aperture distribution, coordination number, porosity, and resistivity. The research outcomes establish a foundation for subsequent simulations, which aim to assess the resistivity response of the digital core under varied fracture size, angle, and cave size conditions. This provides a technical foundation for advancing the fundamental theoretical research of carbonate rocks.
Keywords: Carbonate rock, Multi-scale digital cores, fractures, Caves, resistivity
Received: 15 Nov 2024; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Zhao, Liu, Xiao, Cui, Wei, Zhang, Mao, Xia, Xu, Sun and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yuejiao Liu, School of Geoscience, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
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