Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96

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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

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Fracture and vug characterization and carbonate rock type automatic MARK
classification using X-ray CT images
⁎
Binhui Lia,c, Xuequn Tanb, Fuyong Wanga, , Peiqing Lianb, Wenbin Gaoa, Yiqiang Lia
a
Research Institute of Enhanced Oil Recovery, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, PR China
b
Petroleum Exploration and Production Research Institute, SINOPEC, Beijing 100083, PR China
c
Exploration and Development Research Institute of Daqing Oilfield Company Ltd., Daqing 163712, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A BS T RAC T

Keywords: This paper presents a method of fracture and vug characterization and automatic classification of rock type in a
Carbonate reservoir naturally fractured vuggy carbonate reservoir using X-ray computed tomography (CT). First, using image
X-ray CT processing technologies such as image segmentation, morphological processing and skeleton extraction, the
Image processing fractures and vugs in the CT images of core plugs were characterized, and then, the characteristic parameters of
Fracture and vug characterization
the fractures and vugs were calculated. Then, a support vector machine (SVM) was utilized for automatic
Support vector machine (SVM)
classification of the fractures and vugs. The shape and the eccentricity of fractures and vugs as the SVM training
eigenvectors can effectively distinguish fractures from vugs with high classification confidence. Finally, with the
characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs calculated from the CT images of core plugs, a new defined
function of the carbonate rock index (CRI) was proposed, which can quantitatively classify the carbonate rock
into three different types: matrix, fractured and vuggy. After analysis of more than 200 core plugs from the Y
reservoir in the Middle East, the CRI values for matrix, vuggy and fractured carbonate rock were given and are 0
< CRI < 1, 1≤CRI≤10 and CRI > 10, respectively. A high CRI value indicates a high fracture density, and a small
CRI value indicates that the carbonate rock is mainly matrix without fractures and vugs. For the vuggy
carbonate core plug, the CRI value is in between those of fractured core plugs and matrix core plugs. Therefore,
the value of CRI can quantitatively evaluate the heterogeneity of carbonate rock due to fractures and vugs. The
field application of this method demonstrated that this new method can effectively characterize fractures and
vugs and quantitatively classify the rock type of the naturally fractured vuggy carbonate reservoir.

1. Introduction connected to the fractures or to the matrix (Iwere et al., 2002).

Carbonate reservoirs contain approximately 60% of the world's oil
reserves and vast quantities of natural gas (Al-Marzouqi et al., 2010).
The development of carbonate reservoirs are rather challenging
compared with siliciclastic reservoirs because of lithological and
pore-space heterogeneity of the carbonate rock (Mousavi et al.,
2012). Affected by lithofacies paleogeography, sedimentary processes
and diagenesis, carbonate reservoirs have a diverse variety of pore
types, structures, geometries and connectivities. For these reasons,
there are large variations in the petrophysical properties and flow
mechanics of carbonate reservoirs (Knackstedt et al., 2007). In the
naturally fractured vuggy carbonate reservoirs, the pore types can be
classified into three parts: matrix, fractures and vugs. Matrix pores
store most hydrocarbons, but the permeability is usually low. The
porosity of a fracture is usually small, but fractures dominate fluid flow
due to the high permeability (Nelson, 2001). Vugs commonly are
The pore type classification in carbonate reservoirs has been well
studied for decades, and several methods have been proposed. Based
on the matrix texture and character of the visible pore structure, Archie
(1952) presented a method of skeleton classification and combined it
with pore geometries and petrophysical properties. Choquette and Pray
(1970) classified pores according to sedimentological fabric, but pore
types are difficult to correlate with flow properties (Pourmohammadi
et al., 2007). According to Lucia (1983, 1995), the interparticle pore
network and the vuggy pore network are the two basic pore networks
that dominate carbonate petrophysical and flow properties. As the
primary type of porosity, the interparticle porosity can be divided into
intergranular and intercrystalline porosities. Vuggy porosity is the
second type of porosity and includes separate vugs and touching vugs,
and vuggy pores usually present as fractures, leached particles and
large irregular cavities. Based on the methods of Choquette and Pray
(1970) and Lucia (1983), Lønøy (2006) developed a new system of

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: wangfuyong@cup.edu.cn, wfyong86@gmail.com (F. Wang).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2017.03.037
Received 14 May 2016; Received in revised form 10 March 2017; Accepted 17 March 2017
Available online 18 March 2017
0920-4105/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
B. Li et al.
Nomenclature
a peak dilation parameter of the normal distribution func-
tion
b offset
CRI carbonate rock index
L core core length
L f max the largest fracture length in longitudinal images
L f sum sum of effective length larger than 5 mm
carbonate pore-type classification that includes 20 pore-type classes
considering the sedimentological and diagenetic features with flow-
related properties, and this classification system provides an improved
porosity-permeability prediction. Mousavi et al. (2012) divided carbo-
nate into three different kinds of rock based on the carbonate contents
for process-based pore scale modelling: grainy, muddy and mixed
rocks. Soto Becerra et al. (2012) and Jonathan et al. (2015) proposed
another method of reservoir classification based on the pore types
using the cementation factor and fuzzy log concept, and they thought
that all the reservoirs could be classified as matrix pores, fractures and
vugs or combinations of these. Loucks et al. (2012) proposed a
classification system for the matrix-related mudrock pores in the
shale-gas system. Two pore types associated with the mineral matrix
can be subdivided into interparticle pores and intraparticle pores, and
the third major pore type is organic-matter pores.
Images from thin sections, casting thin sections, environmental
scanning electron microscope and X-ray CT have been widely used to
describe the pore type and geometry, mineralogy, texture, rock fabric
and diagenetic features. Image processing technology has been applied
for quantitative pore characterization and petrophysical properties
analysis (Ehrlich et al., 1984,1991; Gerard et al., 1992; Anselmetti
et al., 1998; Beiranvand, 2003). X-ray CT is a non-destructive radio-
Fig. 1. The schematic diagram of CT scanning sections of a core plug and CT images of matrix, fractured and vuggy core plugs.
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96
Dcore core diameter
Sfr fracture area percent
Svr vug area percent
k permeability
w vector
α Lagrange multiplier
ϕ core porosity
σ variance
μ peak value of the greyscale
graphic imaging technique and has been extensively applied in earth
science, such as pore characterization, fracture and heterogeneity
description, bulk density and porosity measurement (Watanabe et al.,
2011), flooding experiment monitoring (Alemu et al., 2013; Matsuura
et al., 2015) and petrophysical property measurements (Dehghan
Khalili et al., 2013; Couves et al., 2016; Ramandi et al., 2016).
The Y reservoir is a naturally fractured vuggy carbonate reservoir
and is located in the Middle East. Both primary porosity and secondary
porosity are developed, and the main pore types are inter- and
intraparticle porosity, intraparticle dissolved porosity, intercrystalline
porosity, mouldic and vuggy porosity, and fractures. The main diag-
nosis in the Y reservoir includes cementation, dolomitization, micro-
crystallization, pressure solution and dissolution. Fractures mainly
were induced by the pressure solution, and the fracture aperture varies
from millimetres to 20 centimetres. Mouldic pores unusually were
induced by the full dissolution of biological skeletons in the bioclastic
limestone and intragranular dissolved pores mainly caused by the
partial dissolution of biological skeletons. In previous work, the core
plugs from the Y reservoir were classified into three different types
according to the CT images of core plugs—matrix, fractured and
vuggy—and the effect of fractures and vugs on the petrophysical
properties of carbonate rock was studied (Wang et al., 2016).
B. Li et al.
However, the classification criteria of matrix, fractured and vuggy
carbonate rock is not clear, and fractures and vugs were identified from
CT images by visual observation, which was time-consuming and
resulted in many uncertainties. With the image processing technology,
the characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs will be calculated
from CT images in this paper. In addition, a new method of carbonate
rock automatic classification will be proposed, which can quantitatively
classify carbonate rock into three different types: matrix, fractured and
vuggy.
2. Acquisition of X-ray CT images
More than 200 core plugs from the Y reservoir were scanned with
an X-ray CT scanner. Fig. 1(a) illustrates the schematic diagram of CT
scanning sections of a core plug. The core plug size is approximately
2 in. long with a 1.5-in. diameter. For each scanned core plug, there are
2 longitudinal section images and 8 cross-section images, and the
distance between two neighbouring cross-section images is 6 mm. In
each CT image, there are 512*512 pixels with 0.2*0.2 mm resolution.
Each pixel has 256 different shades of grey; 0 means the blackest and
255 means the whitest, with other shades of grey in between.
Fig. 1(b)–(d) present the CT images of the matrix, fractured and
vuggy core plugs, respectively. In the CT images, matrix presents white,
whereas fractures and vugs present dark. The distribution of fractures
and vugs inside the core plugs can be clearly visualized with the CT
images.
This paper proposes a new method of carbonate rock type
automatic classification by characterizing fractures and vugs from CT
images with image processing technology. A new function was defined
and can quantitatively classify carbonate rock types considering
fracture and vug distribution. Fig. 2 presents the workflow of this
method, including the following procedures: (1) image segmentation,
(2) characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs calculation, (3)
fracture and vug classification with SVM and (4) carbonate rock
classification with the CRI function.
3. CT image segmentation
Noise in the CT images can cause image blurring, especially around
the edges of fractures and vugs, and therefore, noise should be removed
before extracting fractures and vugs from CT images. There are many
image denoising methods (Buades et al., 2005), such as the average
filter, Gaussian filter and median filter. The adaptive median filter
method was applied here, as this method can not only improve the
algorithm efficiency but also retain detailed information at the image
sensitive area (Hwang and Haddad, 1995).
Image segmentation converts the greyscale CT image into a discrete
form for quantitative pore space characterization (Iassonov et al.,
2009). For the micro/nano-CT images with high resolution, the
microscale/nanoscale pores can be distinguished from the matrix
(Andrä et al., 2013). However, the CT images of core plugs here were
obtained from an industrial X-ray CT, and the resolution was low. As a
result, the microscale/nanoscale pores cannot be distinguished from
the matrix, and only fractures and vugs can be identified in the CT
images. Therefore, some image segmentation methods widely used in
the high-resolution CT images, such as Otsu's method (Otsu, 1975) and
the region-growing approach (Peter et al., 2008), cannot be used here,
and another method of image segmentation for the low resolution CT
images needs to be developed.
After analysing the greyscale value distribution of CT images, it is
found that the greyscale value is in accordance with a normal
distribution, as shown in Fig. 3. Based on this relationship, this paper
proposed a new method of image segmentation by fitting the greyscale
value distributions of CT images with the normal distribution function:
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96
2
a −
(x − μ )
f (x ) = e 2σ 2 + b
2π σ (1)
where a is the dilation parameter, b is the offset, μ is the greyscale peak
value and σ is the variance. By fitting the greyscale distributions of CT
images with the normal distribution function, the greyscale peak value
μ and variance σ can be determined. The greyscale value at 3σ distance
from the greyscale left-hand peak value was selected as the threshold of
image segmentation. With this new method, the CT images of fractured
and vuggy core plugs were segmented, and as shown in Fig. 4, the
fractures and vugs can be effectively distinguished from the matrix.
Image segmentation with porosity constraints is another widely
used method. The measured porosity of core plugs can provide the
constraint. The threshold of image segmentation was adjusted until the
area porosity calculated from the CT image was the same as the
measured porosity of the core plug. Fig. 5 shows the result of image
segmentation using the normal distribution method and the porosity
constraint method in the matrix, fractured and vuggy core plugs. For
matrix and fractured core plugs, the image segmentation with porosity
constraint wrongly identified some matrix areas as vugs. The over-
identification problem was caused by the low resolution of the CT
images. Except for fractures and vugs, matrix pores cannot be
identified due to the low resolution of pixels, as each pixel is the
average CT scanning response of matrix and pores. As a result, image
segmentation with porosity constraints identified a greater fracture and
vug area than the actual area. In contrast, the image segmentation with
normal distribution method can effectively identify fractures and vugs
from the CT images, especially in the matrix and fractured core plugs.
4. Characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs
calculation
Some parameters of fractures and vugs such as the fracture length
and width, and vug size are important for characterizing the petro-
physical properties of carbonate rock. In this procedure, the character-
istic parameters of fractures and vugs were calculated from CT images.
First, as the morphology of fractures and vugs was irregular after image
segmentation, morphological processing was conducted to remove
noise and obtain smooth morphology with the opening and closing
operators (Dougherty et al., 2003). As shown in Fig. 6, after morphol-
ogy processing, some redundant isolated pixels were removed, and the
morphology of fractures and vugs became smoother. In addition,
morphology processing can also reconnect some neighbouring areas
that were originally connected. For example, the two fractures (Nos. 44
C imagees
CT
Noiise reducttio
Image segmentation
Charracteristicc parametters calculation
Fracturre and vu
ug classificcation witth SVM
Carbo
onate rock
k index (C
CRI) calcu
ulation
Carrbonate rock type classification
Fig. 2. The workflow of carbonate rock classification using CT images of core plugs using
image processing technology.
B. Li et al.
Fig. 3. Greyscale value distribution of CT images is fitted using the normal distribution
function.
Fig. 4. CT image segmentation using the grey value normal distribution method: (a)
presents image segmentation result in the CT image of a fractured core plug; (b) presents
image segmentation result in the CT image of a vuggy core plug.
and 53) of the fractured core plugs in Fig. 6 were reconnected after the
morphology processing, and became a longer fracture (No. 21).
Then, the skeletons of fractures and vugs were extracted from the
CT images. Skeleton extraction is important for characterizing the
topological structure and morphological character of fractures and vugs
and is also the foundation of characteristic parameters of fractures and
vugs calculation. The skeleton can be extracted through the thinning
algorithm by eliminating the marginal pixels of connected domains
until obtaining the characteristics of the skeleton (Zhang and Suen,
1984). Fig. 7 illustrates the results of skeleton extraction from the CT
images of a fractured core plug and a vuggy core plug. In Fig. 7(a),
there are two main fractures in this CT image. The longest fracture was
clearly identified, and the fracture skeleton was extracted, and then the
effective length of this fracture could be calculated. However, the
second fracture on the left side of the image was identified as two
discontinuous small fractures, as the middle part of the fracture is
blurry and cannot be distinguished from the matrix. Fig. 7(b) presents
the skeleton extraction result in the CT images of a vuggy core plug.
The extracted skeleton can reflect the size and tomography of the vugs.
Finally, the characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs were
calculated from CT images. Some key characteristic parameters are
area, perimeter, effective length, equivalent width, equivalent circle
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96
diameter, and azimuth. These characteristic parameters can be com-
bined into some key dimensionless parameters, such as the shape
factor, aspect ratio, eccentricity and tortuosity. Fig. 8 presents the CT
image of a vuggy core plug. Although dozens of vugs developed, the
measured porosity of this core plug is only 9.87% with the air
permeability of 2.5 mD. With the image processing technology, 87
vugs were identified from the CT image, and the characteristic
parameters of 12 vugs with the effective length larger than 2.5 mm
are illustrated in Table 1. The vug surface porosity can be calculated
using the area of all vugs divided by the section area, and its value is
7.84%. As the measured porosity of this core plug is only 9.87%, it can
be inferred that vugs make a significant contribution for the porosity,
and the matrix is very tight with low connectivity of matrix pores,
which can account for the low air permeability of this core plug.
5. Fracture and vug classification with SVM
Although fractures and vugs can be easily distinguished from each
other with visual observation, the workload is huge when there are
thousands of CT images scanned from hundreds of core plugs.
Automatic fracture and vug classification with computers can greatly
reduce the workload; however, establishing the classification criteria of
fractures and vugs is the first problem to be solved. Based on the
calculated characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs, a support
vector machine (SVM) was utilized here to derive the criteria of
fracture and vug classification and can automatically distinguish
fractures from vugs using a computer.
SVM is a type of machine learning method based on the statistical
learning theory and used for classification and regression analysis, and
it has been widely used in many fields, such as forecasting oil PVT
properties (El-Sebakhy, 2009), predicting porosity (Al-Anazi and
Gates, 2010), and predicting water coning time (Ahmadi et al.,
2014). Using nonlinear kernel function, the input of SVM can be
mapped into the high-dimensional space for nonlinear classification.
SVM is based on the principle of structural risk minimization (Vapnik
and Chervonenkis, 1974). The structural risk minimization requires
that the training error and testing risk should be minimum and the
classification model and model parameters should be optimized. Linear
SVM was applied here for vug and fracture automatic classification.
The linear separating hyperplane is the simplest classification model.
In a two-dimensional plane, the most suitable slope of the straight line
and intercept are selected to maximize the margin around the
separating hyperplane for the classification risk minimization. The
parameters of separating the hyperplane can be calculated with support
vectors, which have data points lying closest to the separating hyper-
plane. The separating hyperplane function is:
wT x + b = 0 (2)
where w is N-dimensional vector and b is the offset. For the support
vectors around the separating hyperplane:
wT x + b = 1 (3)
Select suitable w and b to maximize the margin around the
separating hyperplane. The larger the margin is, the larger confidence
of the classification will be. The objective function of the maximum
margin classifier is:
1
max s. t . ,yi (wT xi + b ) ≥ 1, i = 1, ... ,N
w (4)
The objective function of Eq. (4) is a quadratic equation with linear
constraints, which is a problem of quadratic programing.
Mathematically, it can be solved with the Lagrange multiplier method.
The constructed constraint equation is:
1 N
L (w , b , α ) = w 2 − ∑i =1 αi [ yi (wT xi + b) − 1] s. t. ,αi ≥ 0 (5)
2
B. Li et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96

Fig. 5. Comparison of image segmentation results using the normal distribution method and porosity constraint in CT images of matrix, fractured and vuggy core plugs.

where α is the Lagrange multiplier. w and b can be obtained by solving min

b=1− (wT→
xi )
Eq. (5): yi = +1 (7)
N
w= ∑i =1 αi yi xi First, the eigenvectors of fractures and vugs were established, which
(6)
consists of pore type (fracture or vug) and the characteristic parameters

Fig. 6. The morphology processing of fractures and vugs identified from CT images of fractured and vuggy core plugs.

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B. Li et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96

Fig. 7. The skeleton of fractures and vugs was extracted from CT images of fractured and vuggy core plugs.

of fractures and vugs. Table 2 shows the characteristic parameters of 25

fractures and 40 vugs calculated from the CT images of different core
plugs, and the pore types of fractures and vugs were marked as 1 and
−1, respectively. The samples of fractures and vugs in Table 2 were
used for SVM training to establish the criteria of fracture and vug
automatic classification.
Generally, fractures are much longer and narrower than vugs. As
Table 2 shows, the aspect ratio of fractures varies from 8.40 to 30.65,
which is larger than that of vugs. For vugs, the aspect ratio varies from
1.30 to 5.61. Therefore, the tortuous length and equivalent width have
the potential to distinguish fractures from vugs. Fig. 9 shows the SVM
training result of fracture and vug classification using the tortuous
Fig. 8. The characteristic parameters of vugs extracted from a CT image of a vuggy core
plug were calculated. The porosity of this vuggy core plug is 9.87%, and the air
length and equivalent width as the training eigenvectors. The solid line
permeability is 2.5 mD. in the figure was the derived separating hyperplane from the SVM.
Although most fractures and vugs were correctly distinguished from
Table 1 each other, one fracture and three vugs were wrongly classified. In
The calculated characteristic parameters of vugs from a CT image of a vuggy core plug addition, the separation margin was very small and the point around
using image processing technology. the separating hyperplane was very close and cannot be clearly
classified. Therefore, tortuous length and equivalent width are not
Vug no. Effective Equivalent Equivalent Area Perimeter Azimuth
length width circle (mm2) (mm) (deg)
the most suitable characteristic parameters for fracture and vug
(mm) (mm) diameter classification, and another characteristic parameter should be tested.
(mm) As shown in Table 2, there is a big difference between the shape
factor and the eccentricity of fractures and vugs. In general, the shape
7 2.87 0.98 1.90 2.82 6.14 −40.4
8 2.61 0.99 1.81 2.58 7.53 84.4
factor of fractures is smaller than that of vugs and is less than 0.4. The
9 5.54 1.24 2.96 6.89 17.44 35.5 eccentricity of fractures is close to 1 and is larger than that of vugs. For
11 3.88 1.15 2.38 4.44 10.20 −89.8 this reason, the shape factor and eccentricity were selected as the SVM
22 3.91 0.63 1.77 2.45 8.81 35.6 training eigenvectors for fracture and vug classification. Fig. 10 shows
25 4.95 1.02 2.53 5.03 13.27 9.1
the result of fracture and vug classification with SVM. Fracture samples
32 5.04 1.21 2.79 6.11 12.69 44.8
33 10.34 1.37 4.25 14.20 33.67 67.7 are in the upper left corner of the figure, and vug samples are located
34 5.33 1.24 2.90 6.60 13.85 −60.6 directly below the separation hyperplane. All the samples are correctly
41 4.18 0.88 2.17 3.70 10.84 −42.8 classified, and the separation margin is large enough for fracture and
44 4.17 0.73 1.96 3.03 8.98 67.4 vug classification with high confidence. To verify the SVM training
86 2.66 0.61 1.44 1.62 5.74 77.0
results, the shape factor and eccentricity of another 20 fractures and 23
vugs were plotted in the same plot. As shown in Fig. 11, all the test
samples are located in the correct classification region without an error.
Therefore, shape factor and eccentricity are the most suitable char-

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B. Li et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96

Table 2
The characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs used for SVM training.

Pore no. Pore type Effective length (mm) Tortuous length (mm) Equivalent width (mm) Aspect ratio Shape factor Eccentricity

1 1 20.20 21.84 0.71 30.65 0.101 0.999

2 1 9.63 10.16 0.48 21.15 0.145 0.998
3 1 4.53 4.86 0.47 10.37 0.306 0.992
4 1 8.02 10.56 0.57 18.46 0.188 0.986
5 1 4.70 4.78 0.57 8.40 0.337 0.986
6 1 4.77 4.90 0.52 9.37 0.310 0.989
7 1 9.69 11.98 0.56 21.35 0.141 0.984
8 1 5.26 5.39 0.55 9.70 0.298 0.991
9 1 15.07 19.99 0.59 33.76 0.106 0.995
10 1 10.93 22.42 0.56 40.15 0.095 0.866
11 1 11.16 18.03 0.62 29.13 0.143 0.955
12 1 5.54 8.92 0.51 17.28 0.239 0.883
11 −1 1.66 2.16 0.54 3.87 1.209 0.428
12 −1 1.77 2.01 0.70 2.82 1.171 0.578
13 −1 3.39 3.87 0.87 4.36 0.636 0.808
14 −1 2.07 1.85 0.70 2.59 0.865 0.856
15 −1 1.85 2.61 0.61 4.17 0.968 0.572
16 −1 1.57 1.73 0.61 2.78 1.088 0.783
17 −1 2.99 2.21 1.66 1.30 0.953 0.638
18 −1 3.45 4.26 0.74 5.61 0.545 0.898
32 −1 3.28 3.30 0.95 3.44 0.812 0.902
33 −1 1.48 1.65 0.77 2.12 1.208 0.695

Fig. 11. More samples of fractures and vugs were tested with the SVM classification
using the shape factor and eccentricity as the training eigenvectors.

Fig. 9. The SVM training results of fracture and vug classification using the tortuous
6. Carbonate rock classification
length and equivalent width as the training eigenvectors.

With the calculated characteristic parameters of fractures and vugs

extracted from CT images of core plugs, a new defined function of the
carbonate rock index (CRI) was proposed for quantitatively classifying
carbonate rock types. The definition of the carbonate rock index (CRI)
is:
L f max L f sum 2
( L core
+ Dcore
)
CRI = Sfr
× 100
ϕ (1 − Svr
) (8)

where L f max is the longest fracture in the longitudinal CT images; L core

Fig. 10. The SVM training results of fracture and vug classification using the shape
factor and eccentricity as the training eigenvectors.
acteristic parameters for fracture and vug classification, and fractures
and vugs can be effectively distinguished from each other with high
accuracy.
is the core length; L f sum is the sum of effective length larger than 5 mm;
Dcore is the core diameter; Sfr is the area percent of fracture; Svr is the
area percent of vug; ϕ is the core porosity.
The proposed CRI function considers the distribution of fractures
and vugs inside the core plug, and several key parameters of fractures
and vugs such as fracture length, area percent of fractures and vugs
have been integrated in the CRI function. The CRI function, therefore,
can quantitatively classify the type of carbonate rock. Fig. 12 presents
some examples of carbonate rock classification with the CRI function.
Generally, the CRI value of the fractured carbonate is much larger than
that of vuggy and matrix carbonate. For the fractured carbonate, the
CRI value of core plugs with long fractures and high fracture density is
large. For example, according to the CT images, the fractures in the

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B. Li et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 153 (2017) 88–96

Fig. 12. Examples of carbonate rock classification with CRI. There are mainly three types of carbonate rock in the Y reservoir, namely, fractured, vuggy and matrix carbonate, and the
value of CRI is CRI > 10, 1≤CRI≤10, and 0 < CRI < 1, respectively.

240H core plug that are much more obvious than the fractures in the 7. Conclusions
18H core plug, and the CRI value of the 240H core plug is 38.34, which
is much larger than that of the 18H core plug. The CRI value of the This paper proposed a new method of carbonate rock type
vuggy carbonate is in between the fractured carbonate and matrix classification according to the distribution of fractures and vugs in
carbonate, and generally is between 1 and 10. The core plugs of 586H, the CT images. With the image processing technology, fractures and
29H and 413H are matrix carbonate without fractures and vugs, and vugs can be characterized from the CT images of core plugs. The image
the CRI values are smaller than 1. In addition, the more homogeneous segmentation with porosity constraint based on the normal distribution
the core plug is, the smaller the CRI value will be, and thereby the CRI function of greyscale value can effectively distinguish fractures and
function can evaluate the carbonate heterogeneity due to fractures and vugs from matrix, and then the characteristic parameters of fractures
vugs. and vugs can be calculated. Using shape factor and eccentricity as the
With this method of carbonate rock classification, more than 200
core plugs from the Y reservoir were used to find the critical CRI value Table 3
for carbonate rock type classification. As Table 3 shows, the CRI value CRI values for different core samples.
for the matrix, fractured and vuggy carbonate is 0 < CRI < 1, 1≤CRI≤10
Carbonate rock type Matrix carbonate Fractured Vuggy carbonate
and CRI > 10, respectively. With these established classification criter- carbonate
ia, the carbonate rock with fractures and vugs can be automatically
classified with a computer using the CRI function. CRI value 0 < CRI < 1 1≤CRI≤10 CRI > 10

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B. Li et al.
training eigenvectors, SVM can effectively distinguish fractures from
vugs with high classification confidence.
A newly defined function of the CRI was proposed, which can
quantitatively classify carbonate rock into three different types—
matrix, fractured and vuggy—considering the distribution of fractures
and vugs. For the matrix, vuggy and fractured carbonate rock, the CRI
value is 0 < CRI < 1, 1≤CRI≤10 and CRI > 10, respectively. The large
CRI value indicates a high fracture density, and the small CRI value
indicates that the carbonate rock is mainly matrix without fractures
and vugs. The CRI value can provide information about fracture and
vug development and evaluate heterogeneity of carbonate with frac-
tures and vugs.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 51604285), the Beijing Municipal Natural
Science Foundation (No. 3164048), the National Science and
Technology Special Project (No. 2016ZX05033-003), and the
Scientific Research Foundation of China University of Petroleum,
Beijing (No. 2462016YQ1101).
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