High-resolution Mechanical Earth Models in Highly Laminated Formations. Measuring Elastic Properties at the Centimetric Scale

Abstract

Summary In this work, we concept-proved a core-to-log methodology that provides a fast calibration method for log-based elasticity. We measured rebound hardness in parallel to dynamic measurements of ultrasonic surface wave velocities (P and S) at the milimetric scale, then calibrated the results with discrete triaxial tests performed on plugs, representing all relevant lithological facies, and finally compared the results against log-based parameters. Our work shows that such integration helps at developing robust core-tolog elasticity relationships in the entire core length, eventually providing a proper foundation for better stiffness model prediction, at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional core acquisition programs. We have shown that calibrated high-resolution measurements at the core scale may be used to create accurate dynamic to static correlations, to identify and characterize potential barriers to fracture growth, and to characterize lithological facies for predicting their elastic properties at new wells when core data is not available.