Pore shape characterization of Fontainebleau sandstone and its models using Fourier descriptor

Abstract

In the last decade, reconstruction of porous rock as well as its modelling has been developed vastly, which has been possible because of the μCT scanning devices. One of a famous rock that has been a subject of many researches in the characterization of porous medium is the Fontainebleau sandstone. Its homogeneity of the pore structure has been one of the reasons of the development of computational analyses that have also been applied to characterize the rock. The characteristics include porosity, permeability, curvature, pore connectivity, and percolation. Many models have also been developed based on the properties of this rock, e.g., the Gaussian Field model, Diagenesis model, Simulated Annealing model and Continuum Geometrical model. In this paper we are interested in the characteristic of the pore geometry of Fontainebleau and its models, i.e., the quantification of pore shape. We performed analysis based on Fourier Descriptor, which utilized Complex Fourier analysis where the boundary of the 2D pore is circumnavigated in the complex plane, such as to obtain the shape boundary coordinates of an object. The analysis using Fourier Descriptors demonstrates that the complexity level can be distinguished using the extracted length characteristic of the shape signature, i.e., the higher the level of complexity, the higher the length characteristic of shape signature. From this analysis we conclude that the Continuum Geometrical model has the most similar pore geometry characteristics with the Fontainebleau sandstone. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.