Developing a Pore Network Construction Algorithm for Computerized Tomography Images of Geomaterials

doi:10.19657/j.geoscience.1000-8527.2019.02.10

Abstract

Abstract:

Pore network model is important in researching for granular or porous media.Many methods have been proposed to construct a pore network, and researchers have put increasing efforts on the image-based methods. This paper presents a pore network construction method based on the medial axis method, as the original method cannot represent the pore center correctly and the coordinates of the axial points are unknown. The improved method proposed in this study represents the pore centers, and the coordinates of all axial points are accessible. After constructing the pore network, the pore volume and throat size can be calculated. Our work also presents an Euclidean distance-based and a watershed-based method to solve the over-segmentation problem.

Key words: pore network, throat, geomaterial, tomography, image process

CLC Number:

P642

REN Xianzhuo, LINDEN Joost van der, NARSILIO Guillermo. Developing a Pore Network Construction Algorithm for Computerized Tomography Images of Geomaterials[J]. Geoscience, 2019, 33(02): 345-356.

Figures/Tables 15

Fig.1 Flowchart showing the steps of pore network construction

Fig.2 Rule of labelling

Fig.3 Relationship between skeleton and graph

Fig.4 Flow charts of the skeleton analysis procedures

Fig.5 Images produced by the distance transforming algorithm

Fig.6 Images produced by the distance transforming algorithm

Fig.7 Results of the throat size calculation

Fig.8 Process of the watershed algorithm

Fig.9 Results of the watershed segmentation

Fig.10 Plot showing the results of watershed-based algorithm

Fig.11 Plot showing the results of the Euclidean distance-based algorithm

Fig.12 Example of intersection of spherical surfaces

Fig.13 Plots showing the results of the modified Euclidean distance-based merging algorithm

Fig.14 Plot showing the results of the modified watershed-based merging algorithm

Fig.15 Result analyses

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