Assessing the Permeability in Anisotropic and Weakly Permeable Porous Rocks Using Radial Pulse Tests

Abstract

The pulse test is usually considered to be an efficient method for measuring the permeability of weakly permeable porous rocks. Classically, the test consists of imposing a pressure drop on the base of a cylindrical sample and measuring the pressure variations in the upstream and downstream reservoirs. In the present work, we propose a new apparatus and procedure for hollow cylindrical samples in which the pressure drop is imposed in an axial hole and the pressure is measured both in the hole and on the circumference of the sample. Unlike the classical axial pulse test, this configuration results in a flow in both the axial and transversal directions rather than only in the axial direction. For transverse isotropic rocks, this configuration allows the assessment of the permeability in the isotropy planes and normal to the isotropy planes in a single sample when the samples are appropriately oriented. The test is fully hydro-mechanically coupled; therefore, no analytical solution exists. The test is then interpreted through fully coupled numerical modeling in 3D, considering the anisotropy of the samples. In previous works, we developed and implemented a transverse isotropic poroelastic constitutive law in the finite element code Code_Aster (Edf), as well as an inverse method coupled to the numerical modeling for parameter identification. The method is adapted to the radial pulse test and then applied to hollow cylindrical samples of Meuse/Haute-Marne argillite with the axis either parallel or perpendicular to the isotropy planes. Although this method requires 2 samples for the assessment of permeability in the isotropy planes and normal to the isotropy planes in the axial pulse test, the method applied to the radial pulse test allows the assessment of intrinsic permeability in both directions on a single sample, which allows freeing ourselves from a heterogeneity effect.