Quantitative Petrostructure Analysis. Technical Summary Report

摘要

The establishment of quantitative techniques would lead to the development of predictive tools which would be of obvious importance in applied geophysics and engineering. In rock physics, it would help establish laws for averaging the effects of finite densities of real cracks and pores. It would also help in elucidating the relation between observed complex crack structures and various models for the mechanical properties of single cracks. The petrostructure study is addressed to this problem. The purpose of the effort is to quantitatively characterize the mineral and crack texture of granitic rock samples. The rock structures are to be characterized in such a way that the results can be used (1) to constrain the modelling of the effect of cracks on the physical properties of rocks, and (2) to test the possibility of establishing quantitative and predictive relations between petrographic observables and whole rock properties. Statistical techniques are being developed and being applied to the problem of parameterizing complex texture and crack patterns of rock, and of measuring correlation of these parameters to other measurable variables. The study is an application in factor analysis. (ERA citation 06:005497)