3D Printing for Core Flooding Tests Evaluating

To assess the properties of natural reservoirs, direct tests of cores from wells are carried out. The use of a core has its own characteristics and limitations: initial core material is always limited in volume and valuable; as a result of cyclic tests, the core material under the influence of external forces undergoes deformations, partially (or completely) destructs, becomes unusable, which leads to the need for very careful use of the core; and most importantly, the change in the characteristics of the rock from sample to sample as a result of its heterogeneity leads to the fact that analytical models often do not match the results of laboratory experiments. These disadvantages are absent when using 3D printing, which allows you to create many 3D models with an identical structure of a porous medium and test the mathematical filtration model of interest an unlimited number of times and evaluate the effect of all possible boundary conditions on the final result. 3D printing refers to additive technologies and uses a 3D printer that prints models for laboratory research based on a digital image of a rock. To date, trends have already emerged in the study of fluid filtration on 3D printed core models. A feature of such studies is the possibility, on the one hand, of creating a network of channels, on the other hand, of recreating the natural structure of the rock and pore space. The creation and use of 3DP models opens up new possibilities for studying various phenomena observed during fluid filtration in a porous medium, including loading. In this paper, we present the results of studies of 3D printed models and the study of their transport characteristics under loading, including cyclic loading.