Porosity study of synthetic sandstones by non-destructive nuclear techniques

Abstract

In this paper nuclear techniques were used to describe the structural characteristics of ceramic samples. These samples were produced mainly with silica to simulate sandstones. Three sets of samples with different characteristics were analyzed using gamma ray transmission to obtain point by point porosity and X-ray microtomography to obtain the porosity, for 2D sections and the scanned bulk, as well as the pore size distribution. The transmission results indicated total porosity values of 28.6 (4.5)% for the group of samples called ceramic I and 59.6 (2.1)% for ceramic II. The samples analyzed by microtomography achieved resolutions of 1.7, 0.6 and 1.3 μm for the ceramic I, II, and III samples, respectively. This analysis indicated average porosity values of 27.9 (1.4)% for ceramic I samples and 29.4 (1.2)% for ceramic III samples. © 2011.