AccScience Publishing / JSE / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JSE026090038
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Influence of filling characteristics on rock physical properties of deep carbonate reservoirs based on digital rock modeling

Siqi Ji1,2 ,  Wei Cheng1,2,3* ,  Hui Shen1,2,4 ,  Wei-Hua Liu1,2,5 ,  Dechao Han1,2
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1 SINOPEC Geophysical Research Institute, SINOPEC Corp., Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
2 SINOPEC Key Laboratory of Rock Physics and Seismic Modeling, SINOPEC Geophysical Research Institute, SINOPEC Corp., Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
3 Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
4 Department of Geophysical Prospecting, School of Geophysics and Information Engineering, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, Beijing, China
5 Department of Geophysics, School of Geophysics and Information Technology, China University of Geosciences-Beijing, Beijing, China
JSE, 026090038 https://doi.org/10.36922/JSE026090038
Received: 25 February 2026 | Revised: 7 April 2026 | Accepted: 15 April 2026 | Published online: 22 May 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Deep carbonate reservoirs are rich in oil and gas resources and are important targets for exploration. This study focuses on the Maokou Formation carbonate reservoir in the Sichuan Basin, which exhibits significant heterogeneity, complex karst characteristics, and filling phenomena. Due to the limited number of carbonate samples with representative filling characteristics and the difficulty of characterizing different types of fillings with similar densities using high-precision X-ray computed tomography, the rock physical properties of carbonate rocks with different filling minerals in the Maokou Formation reservoir are unclear. This makes it difficult to establish a system for the reservoir’s physical properties and fluid-sensitive parameters. This study integrates thin-section and image analyses to statistically characterize the filling minerals and proposes two approaches for constructing 3D digital rock models that incorporate karst and filling features of the Maokou Formation reservoir. Additionally, accurate P-wave velocity (Vp) and S-wave velocity (Vs) for different types of fillings were obtained using rock-physics experiments, providing precise input parameters for digital rock simulations. Several typical samples were selected to conduct acoustic experiments under varying confining pressures to measure Vp and Vs. This study analyzed the elastic properties of the rock under different mineral-filling proportions, filling orientations, and fluid-filling characteristics in the Maokou Formation carbonate reservoir, providing support for the extraction of the reservoir’s physical properties and fluid-sensitive parameters, as well as for quantitative reservoir prediction.

Keywords
Deep carbonate reservoirs
Filling characteristics
Digital rock
Rock-physics experiment
Numerical simulation
Funding
This research was financially supported by the Project from SINOPEC Science and Technology Department (Grant No. P24170) and the Joint Funds Key Support Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U24B2020) and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20220995).
Conflict of interest
All authors are employees of SINOPEC Corp.; however, they were not involved in any activities that could constitute a conflict of interest in relation to this study.
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Electronic ISSN: 0963-0651 Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing
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