Pore‐Scale Rock‐Typing and Upscaling of Relative Permeability on a Laminated Sandstone Through Minkowski Measures
基于闵可夫斯基度量的层状砂岩孔隙尺度岩石分型与相对渗透率升尺度研究

Understanding two‐phase flow in laminated sandstones is important for fluid migration control and operational strategy determination in underground energy and hydrology engineering projects. Digital core analysis provides unparalleled understanding of two‐phase flow in complex porous media, but the integration into field analytical workflow is obstructed by the huge computational burden and imaging limitations on a standard rock core. To address this challenge, we propose a novel pore‐scale rock‐typing and upscaling approach for fast computation of two‐phase flow properties on large three‐dimensional digital rock images that contain billions of voxels. Firstly, a heterogeneous rock sample is divided into several homogeneous rock types through data clustering of regional 3D morphological parameters, and their two‐phase flow properties are calculated from selected subsamples using in‐house pore‐network model. The capillary pressure and relative permeability curves of the full digital image are then estimated through quasi‐static modeling on the rock type distribution. The excellent agreement between the upscaling results and pore‐scale simulations on the full image has verified the effectiveness of this two‐phase flow upscaling strategy. With largely reduced computational demands and clearly defined lamination heterogeneity, this approach has demonstrated good potential in bridging the gap between pore‐scale and core‐scale fluid flow mechanisms. In addition, due to the laminated structural characteristics, we also find a significant reduction in phase mobility over a range of saturations in the relative permeability curves of this highly permeable rock sample.

Recommended citation: Jiang, H., Shi, B., Qin, C.‐Z., Arns, C., & Hassanizadeh, S. M. (2026). Pore‐scale rock‐typing and upscaling of relative permeability on a laminated sandstone through Minkowski measures. Water Resources Research, 62, e2025WR041036. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025WR041036
Download Paper