Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to analyse evolution of effective mechanical and transport properties of rock aquifer, which is subjected to progressive chemical degradation due to CO2 dissolution. The proposed study focuses on long-term and far field conditions, when degradation of porous matrix can be assumed to be homogeneous at sample scale. It is very well known that morphology of pore network and solid skeleton defines important macroscopic properties of the rock (permeability, stiffness). Therefore, modelling of such porous material should be based on morphological and statistical characterisation of investigated rocks. First of all, in order to obtain statistically equivalent representations of real specimen a reconstruction method inspired by natural process of sandstone formation is adapted. Then the selected generated samples satisfy morphological informations which are extracted by analysing microtomography of the natural rock sample. Secondly, a methodology to estimate effective mechanical properties of investigated material, based directly on binary images, is featured. Effective mechanical behaviour is obtain within the framework of periodic homogenization, However due to lack of geometrical periodicity two different approaches are used (reflectional symmetry of considered RVE and a fixed point method, using additional layer spread over the considered geometry). Evolution of permeability is estimated in classical way using upscaling method in the form of Darcy's law. Finally, chemical dissolution of material is tackled in a simplified way by performing morphological dilation of porous phase. Detailed analysis of chosen morphological descriptors evolution, triggered by modifications of microstructures is provided. The relation between morphological properties – permeability – elastic moduli is also provided. The methodology developed in this work could be easily applied to other heterogeneous materials.