Mission Statement
To discover and understand the relations between geophysical measurements and underlying rock and fluid properties, and while doing so, help to train the next generations of world-class Earth Scientists.
Research Goals:
- To understand how the elastic and electrical properties of rock are determined by their composition, porosity, microstructure, and pore fluid content.
- To understand how chemical reactivity of pore fluids and minerals impacts the physical properties of rocks.
- To build quantitative, physically-based models that illustrate the fundamental processes occurring within rocks, and that can make accurate predictions of rock properties with variations in composition, saturation, temperature, and stress.
Approach:
- Laboratory measurements of electrical and elastic properties of rocks under in situ conditions of temperature and stress.
- Laboratory measurements of porosity, permeability, and composition of rocks and pore fluids.
- High resolution images (SEM, CLSM, FIB, CT) of rock micro/nano structure.
- High performance computational simulation of elastic and transport properties of rocks, as well as simulation of compaction and elastic properties of unconsolidated sediments.
- Chemical modeling and analysis of changes to rock properties associated with reactive fluids.
- Theoretical effective medium modeling of rock elastic, poroelastic, mechanical, and transport properties.
- Analysis and interpretation of geophysical field data, integrated with rock physics and geologic concepts.