Elastic and shear moduli of coal measure rocks derived from basic well logs using fractal statistics and radial basis functions C. O ¨ zgen Karacan Tel.: +1 412 386 4008; fax: +1412 386 6595. E-mail address: [email protected] CDC/NIOSH, Pittsburgh Research Laboratory, Disaster Prevention and Response Branch, 626 Cochrans Mill Road, PO Box 18070, Pittsburgh, PA 15236, USA abstract Gamma ray, density, sonic and core logs obtained from two boreholes drilled over a longwall panel in Southwestern (SW) Pennsylvania were analyzed for formation boundaries, log-derived porosities and densities and for rock elastic properties from sonic transit times. Gamma ray (GR) and density logs (DL) were analyzed using univariate statistical techniques and fractal statistics for similarity and ordering of the log data in depth. A Fourier transformation with low-pass filter was used as a noise elimination (filtering) technique from the original logs. Filtered data was tested using basic univariate and fractal statistics, rescaled range (R/S) and power spectrum (PS) analysis to compare the information characteristics of the filtered logs with the original data. The randomness of log data in depth was analyzed for fractional Gaussian noise (fGn) or fractional Brownian motion (fBm) character. A new prediction technique using radial basis function (RBF) networks was developed to calculate shear and Young’s moduli of the formations when sonic logs are not available. For this approach, the filtered logs were used as input to an RBF based upon a combination of supervised and unsupervised learning. The network was trained and tested using rock elastic properties calculated from the sonic log of one of the boreholes. The network was used to predict the elastic and shear moduli of the coal- measure rocks over a longwall coal mine in SW Pennsylvania. This approach demonstrated that it could be used for prediction of elastic and shear moduli of coal-measure rocks with reasonable accuracy. 1. Introduction The properties of coal-measure rocks within the longwall overburden are important because of their controlling effect on fluid storage and flow before and after coal extraction. Methane inflow into the mines from fractured strata during longwall mining and production potential of the methane degasification boreholes drilled from surface (gob gas ventholes or GGVs) to capture these emissions are influenced by reservoir, elastic and strength characteristics of the overlying strata. Thus, the ability to accurately determine reservoir and elastic properties of the coal measure rocks is extremely important for ground control and methane control objectives in underground coal mining. The elastic modulus, or Young’s modulus, and shear modulus are used when deformations in underground mines need to be computed. Experimentally, the elastic modulus can be determined from the stress–strain response of a rock sample subjected to uniaxial compression. However, this is a complicated and time consuming experiment. With the advent of new computing and experimental techni- ques, complicated and time consuming experiments and methods to determine rock elastic and strength properties are being replaced by quicker, and may be even more accurate, techniques. For instance, the uniaxial unconfined compressive strength (UCS) test has been largely replaced by simpler, faster and cheaper ‘‘indirect’’ tests such as point loading method [1] and Schmidt hammer [2], although UCS was the main direct quantitative method for rock strength determination for many years. Triaxial testing of a core from a rock material to find rock elastic and strength properties is another difficult, expensive and complicated laboratory test, in which the stress state in the rock sample is axisymmetric and defined by the axial stress, confining pressure and pore pressure. The results of this test are usually studied in terms of Terzaghi’s effective mean pressure and deviatoric stress which correspond to volume strain and the deviatoric strain [3]. In order to overcome the difficulties related to determination of elastic properties of rocks by laboratory tests, it has become very popular to develop alternatives that would predict the elastic moduli of rocks using theoretical and empirical approaches. In these approaches, elastic and shear moduli are either related to simple physical properties like total porosity or to other mechan- ical properties, indices, and even to mineral composition of rocks that are determined in the laboratory or documented in the
Elastic and shear moduli of coal measure rocks derived from basic well logs using fractal statistics and radial basis functions
Jun 24, 2023
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