Siovani C. Felipussi Faculdade de Informtica Universidade Luterana do Brasil 92.420-280 Canoas, RS Brazil siovani@ulbra.tche.br Waldir L.

. Roque Instituto de Matemtica Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 91509-900 Porto Alegre, RS Brazil roque@mat.ufrgs.br

Identifying 3D Pores Connectivity from 2D Thin Section Image Analysis

The modelling, visualization and simulation of porous media are quite important aspects to understand chemical and physical properties of petroleum rocks. In particular, the pore space connectivity is an essential feature to study fluid flow properties in the rock. In this work we develop a method to identify the 3D pore connectivity departing from a set of parallel 2D digital images of thin slices of a petroleum rock sample. Several approaches have been used in an attempt to extract the skeleton of the pores, e.g. via medial axis. An alternative approach, with a lower computational cost, is to use the Voronoi technique to construct the skeleton for the 2D pore images and to determine the pore size and distribution. In addition, considering a disector of 2D images of thin slices with the skeletons of the pores, the estimation of the Euler-Poincar characteristic (EPC) can be applied to identify the connectivity of the pores from one slice to the other. The EPC is an integrative topological measure that is defined in terms of the zero and first Betti numbers. Throughout this process, the 3D pores connectivity can be identified and the pore network constructed providing the 3D visualization of the pore space structure.

Block 1: Excelling in the Exploration and Production of Oil and Gas. Forum 7 - Special Poster: Impact of Visualisation Technology on Reservoir Management.