Experimental studies on perturbed acoustic resonant spectroscopy by a small rock sample in a cylindrical cavity

Abstract

A measurement system for acoustic resonant spectroscopy (ARS) is established, and the effects of resonant cavity geometry, inner perturbation samples and environmental temperature on the ARS are investigated. The ARSs of the small samples with various sizes and acoustic properties are measured. The results show that at the normal pressure, the resonant frequency decreases gradually with the increase of liquid temperature in the cylindrical cavity, while the resonant amplitude increases. At certain pressure and temperature, both the resonant frequency and the amplitude decrease greatly when there exist air bubbles inside the cavity fluid. The ARS is apparently affected by the sample porosity and the sample location in the resonant cavity. At the middle of the cavity, the resonant frequencies reach their maximum values for all of the measurement samples. The resonant frequencies of the porous rock samples are smaller than those of the compacted samples if other acoustic parameters are the same. As the sample is moved from the top to the middle of the cavity along its axis, the resonant amplitude increases gradually for the compacted rocks while decreases for the unconsolidated rocks. Furthermore, the resonant amplitude increases firstly and then decreases if the porosity of the rock sample is relatively small. In addition, through the comparisons between the experimental and theoretical results, it is found that the effects of the acoustic parameters and sizes of the samples and the size of the cylindrical cavity on the laboratory results agree well with the theoretical ones qualitatively. These results may provide basic reference for the experiment study of rock acoustic properties in a low frequency using ARS.