CHARACTERIZATION OF TRIAXIAL DEFORMATION AND HYDRAULIC

BEHAVIOR OF SANDSTONES THROUGH IN-SITU TESTING WITH X-RAY

AND NEUTRON TOMOGRAPHY
Fernando Vieira Limaa, Stephen Hall a,X, Erika Tudisco a, Jonas Engqvist a, Robin Woracek b ,
Alessandro Tengattini c, Cyrille Couture c
a
Lund University, Lund, Sweden; X Lund Institute of advanced Neutron and X-ray Science; b ESS, Lund, Swe-
den; c ILL, Grenoble, France

fernando.vieira_lima@solid.lth.se
Recent advances in 3D imaging using x-rays and neutrons have enabled significant progress in
understanding the formation of localized deformation and its effects on the hydraulic properties
of geomaterials. Dedicated instruments now allow for simultaneous imaging using x-rays and
neutrons, enabling the advantages of each modality to be exploited [1]. In this work, x-ray and
neutron tomography data were acquired during coupled triaxial-permeability tests on rock to
characterize the micro-scale hydromechanical behavior and relate this to the macroscopic obser-
vations obtained at the sample's boundaries.
Two coupled triaxial-permeability tests were performed on Idaho Gray sandstone samples in-situ
at the NeXT instrument at the ILL. Standard, boundary measurements were made to provide the
axial force, axial displacement and sample volume changes. Neutron and x-ray tomography data
were acquired during the stepwise compression generating 3D image sequences with cubic voxels
of 43 µm and 55 µm width, respectively. Permeability tests were performed on samples saturated
with heavy water (D2O) by pressure-driven percolation of distilled water (H2O) through the sample
and neutron tomography data were acquired rapidly with an acquisition time of 1 minute, gener-
ating 3D images with 170 µm cubic voxel width. Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) was performed
between the images acquired at the different stages of deformation, allowing the determination
of the full 3D tensor strain fields. Porosity maps were created from images for each load step. The
flow analysis has been achieved using an in-house python script to determine the voxel-saturation
time field, the fluid-front advance, and the flow speed field from the rapidly-acquired neutron
tomography during the fluid percolation stages.
The results show that it was possible to follow the 4D flow evolution of the fluid percolation tests
with neutron tomography. The H2O percolation into the saturated D2O rock was seen to follow a
preferential path due to the natural heterogeneity of the sample, which could subsequently be
identified in the porosity field. The flow speed measured from the images along the preferential
path was higher than that estimated, considering the bulk behavior, confirming the spatial con-
centration of the flow. The quantitative analysis of the sample suggests the prevalence (in fre-
quency and intensity) of contractive strain in the first deformation step, followed by strain allevi-
ation, in the second step, and strain localization with dilation during failure. Furthermore, a clear
relationship was observed between the evolution in the flow path and the spatio-temporal evo-
lution of the deformation in the samples, in particular the incremental volumetric strain fields.
References
[1] A. Tengattini et al., DOI: 10.1016/j.nima. 2020.163939.