Rock elastic properties: Dependence on microstructure

摘要

Depending on the details of the composite microstructure, different theories may be needed to obtain good agreement with measured elastic properties. This observation is especially pertinent whenever porosity is present in the composite, as is normally true for rocks. Predictions of two effective medium theories are compared to data for porous glass samples. The differential effective medium (DEM) theory does a good job of predicting elastic behavior of a porous foam composed of glass. The self-consistent (SC) effective medium theory does equally well at predicting the behavior of a sintered glass-bead sample. We find that the realizable microstructure of each theoretical model is a good analog of the microstructure for one or the other of these two very different porous glasses. Hashin's composite spheres assemblage model is also found to be a good model of the porous glass foam.