Publications Details
Field and laboratory investigations of coring-induced damage in core recovered from Marker Bed 139 at the waste isolation pilot plant underground facility
A combined laboratory and field investigation was carried out to determine the extent of coring-induced damage done to samples cored from Marker Bed 139 at the WIPP site. Coring-induced damage, if present, has the potential to significantly change the properties of the material used for laboratory testing relative to the in situ material properties, resulting in misleading conclusions. In particular, connected, crack-like damage could make the permeability of cored samples orders of magnitude greater than the in situ permeabilities. Our approach compared in situ velocity and resistivity measurements with laboratory measurements of the same properties. Differences between in situ and laboratory results could be attributed to differences in the porosity due to cracks. The question of the origin of the changes could not be answered directly from the results of the measurements. Pre-existing cracks, held closed by the in situ stress, could open when the core was cut free, or new cracks could be generated by coring-induced damage. We used core from closely spaced boreholes at three orientations (0{degree}, {plus_minus}45{degrees} relative to vertical) to address the origin of cracks. The absolute orientation of pre-existing cracks would be constant, independent of the borehole orientation. In contrast, cracks induced by coring were expected to show an orientation dependent on that of the source borehole.