FRACTALS IN ROCK PHYSICS

The concept of fractals, introduced by Mandelbrot (1982), has proven to be a highly useful way to describe the statistics of naturally occurring geometries. One objective of this work is to develop models for rock pore geometry that will distinguish rocks from other porous materials. The length scales of interest include the submicron structure on pore walls, the hundreds of microns structure in pore volumes, and length scales up to the order of centimeters, where a collection of grains can first be described as having the properties of a bulk rock. A second objective of this work is to identify connections between the geometry of flowing fluids in rock pores and the transport properties, such as flow permeability. -from Author