S2: Water Rock Interaction (Special Session)

[S2-06] Estimation of vein-permeability structure based on automated characterization of veins in the 3-D X-ray CT core images: Application to the GT sites of the Oman Drilling Project

[Presentation award entry]

*Yuya Akamatsu¹, Ikuo Katayama¹, Keishi Okazaki², Katsuyoshi Michibayashi³, The Oman Drilling Project Phase 1 Science Party (1. Hiroshima Univ., 2. JAMSTEC, 3. Nagoya Univ.)

Keywords:vein, permeability, oceanic crust, X-ray CT, the Oman Drilling Project

Permeability is an important physical property for understanding the fluid flow in oceanic plates and is greatly affected by the presence of fractures in the rock which will be preserved as veins. In this study, we developed a method to automatically detect veins in core samples from XCT images using Hough transform. The proposed method was applied to three holes drilled in the oceanic crustal section of the Oman Drilling Project to estimate the permeability structure. As a result, the detected veins show different permeability structures depending on their CT numbers.