Rock-physics-guided training sample expansion for machine learning–based reservoir fluid classification under limited well constraints
Machine learning has been widely applied to reservoir fluid prediction; however, its performance strongly depends on the quantity, representativeness, and class distribution of training samples. In practical exploration and development, labeled fluid samples are commonly derived from limited well-log data and are therefore insufficient to capture the range of fluid responses under complex reservoir conditions, restricting model generalization. To address this issue, this study proposes a rock-physics-guided training sample expansion method for reservoir fluid classification under limited well constraints. Elastic response samples under various reservoir conditions were generated using a rock-physics model, and distribution matching between model-generated samples and actual well-log data was performed in the feature space to improve their consistency with actual reservoir responses. A fully connected neural network was then used to establish the nonlinear relationship between fluid-sensitive attributes and reservoir fluid classes. Data-driven, model-driven, and model–data joint-driven training strategies were compared to evaluate the applicability and transferability of the expanded samples. The results show that the rock-physics-guided expanded samples achieved classification performance comparable to that of well-data-driven models and improved model stability under reservoir conditions broader than those represented by the limited training wells. Optimization of the training sample class distribution further improved the recognition of different fluid types. Applications to actual well-log and seismic data verified the effectiveness of the proposed method. These results indicate that machine learning–based fluid prediction under limited well constraints depends not only on network optimization but, more fundamentally, on constructing training samples with physical validity, distributional consistency, and adequate geological coverage.

- Castagna JP, Swan HW. Principles of AVO crossplotting. Leading Edge. 1997;16(4):337-342. doi: 10.1190/1.1437626
- Castagna JP, Swan HW, Foster DJ. Framework for AVO gradient and intercept interpretation. Geophysics. 1998;63(3):948-956. doi: 10.1190/1.1444406
- Aleardi M, Salusti A. Elastic prestack seismic inversion through discrete cosine transform reparameterization and convolutional neural networks. Geophysics. 2021;86(1):R129-R146. doi: 10.1190/geo2020-0313.1
- Tao X, Cao J, Zhao L, Li H, Ren Y, Jian P. Gas-bearing prediction in tight sandstone reservoirs based on multinetwork integration. Interpretation. 2024;12(2):T177-T185. doi: 10.1190/INT-2023-0091.1
- Tian L, Sun S, Qi Y, Shi J. Research and application of conditional generative adversarial network for predicting gas content in deep coal seams. Processes. 2025;13(10):3215. doi: 10.3390/pr13103215
- Hu L, Chen M, Jin H. Gas prediction in tight sandstone reservoirs based on a seismic dispersion attribute derived from frequency-dependent AVO inversion. Processes. 2025;13(7):2210. doi: 10.3390/pr13072210
- Zhong Z, Carr TR, Wu X, Wang G. Application of a convolutional neural network in permeability prediction: a case study in the Jacksonburg-Stringtown oil field, West Virginia, USA. Geophysics. 2019;84(6):B363-B373. doi: 10.1190/geo2018-0588.1
- Feng R, Hansen TM, Grana D, Balling N. An unsupervised deep-learning method for porosity estimation based on poststack seismic data. Geophysics. 2020;85(6):M97-M105. doi: 10.1190/geo2020-0121.1
- Ruiz R, Roubickova A, Reiser C, Banglawala N. Data mining and machine learning for porosity, saturation, and shear velocity prediction: recent experience and results. First Break. 2021;39(7):71-76. doi: 10.3997/1365-2397.fb2021055
- Wu X, Geng Z, Shi Y, Pham N, Fomel S, Caumon G. Building realistic structure models to train convolutional neural networks for seismic structural interpretation. Geophysics. 2020;85(4):WA27-WA39. doi: 10.1190/geo2019-0375.1
- Durall R, Tschannen V, Ettrich N, Keuper J. Generative models for the transfer of knowledge in seismic interpretation with deep learning. Leading Edge. 2021;40(7):534-542. doi: 10.1190/tle40070534.1
- Tian L, Sun S, Li Q, Shi J. Data-driven high-resolution gas-bearing prediction in tight sandstones: a case study from Block L, Eastern Ordos Basin. J Seism Explor 2025;34(3):13-24. doi: 10.36922/JSE025320053
- Halevy A, Norvig P, Pereira F. The unreasonable effectiveness of data. IEEE Intell Syst. 2009;24(2):8-12. doi: 10.1109/MIS.2009.36
- Fabien-Ouellet G, Sarkar R. Seismic velocity estimation: a deep recurrent neural-network approach. Geophysics. 2020;85(1):U21-U29. doi: 10.1190/GEO2018-0786.1
- Lin Y, Zhang Z. Learning or memorizing: a study of generalization issues on data-driven seismic full-waveform inversion. In: Proceedings of the SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2019. September 15-20, 2019; San Antonio, TX. Society of Exploration Geophysicists; 2019:2644-2648. doi: 10.1190/segam2019-3216702.1
- Chen W, Yang L, Zha B, Zhang M, Chen Y. Deep learning reservoir porosity prediction based on multilayer long short-term memory network. Geophysics. 2020;85(4):WA213-WA225. doi: 10.1190/geo2019-0261.1
- Du J, Liu J, Zhang G, Han L, Li N. Pre-stack seismic inversion using SeisInv-ResNet. In: Proceedings of the 89th Annual International Meeting. September 15-20, 2019; San Antonio, TX. SEG. 2019:2338-2342. doi: 10.1190/segam2019-3215750.1
- Zheng Y, Zhang Q, Yusifov A, Shi Y. Applications of supervised deep learning for seismic interpretation and inversion. Leading Edge. 2019;38(7):526-533. doi: 10.1190/tle38070526.1
- Gao Z, Li C, Zhang B, et al. Building large-scale density model via a deep-learning-based data-driven method. Geophysics. 2021;86(1):M1-M15. doi: 10.1190/geo2019-0332.1
- Downton JE, Collet O, Hampson DP, Colwell T. Theory-guided data science-based reservoir prediction of a North Sea oil field. Leading Edge. 2020;39(10):742-750. doi: 10.1190/tle39100742.1
- Karpatne A, Atluri G, Faghmous JH, et al. Theory-guided data science: a new paradigm for scientific discovery from data. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 2017;29(10):2318-2331. doi: 10.1109/TKDE.2017.2720168
- Shen C, Appling AP, Gentine P, et al. Differentiable modelling to unify machine learning and physical models for geosciences. Nat Rev Earth Environ. 2023;4(8):552-567. doi: 10.1038/s43017-023-00450-9
- Schuster GT, Chen Y, Feng S. Review of physics-informed machine-learning inversion of geophysical data. Geophysics. 2024;89(6):T337-T356. doi: 10.1190/geo2023-0615.1
- Das V, Mukerji T. Petrophysical properties prediction from prestack seismic data using convolutional neural networks. Geophysics. 2020;85(5):N41-N55. doi: 10.1190/geo2019-0650.1
- Das V, Pollack A, Wollner U, Mukerji T. Convolutional neural network for seismic impedance inversion. Geophysics. 2019;84(6):R869-R880. doi: 10.1190/geo2018-0838.1
- Avseth P, Mukerji T, Mavko G. Quantitative Seismic Interpretation: Applying Rock Physics Tools to Reduce Interpretation Risk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2005. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511600074
- LeCun Y, Boser B, Denker JS, et al. Backpropagation applied to handwritten zip code recognition. Neural Comput. 1989;1(4):541-551. doi: 10.1162/neco.1989.1.4.541
- Nair V, Hinton GE. Rectified linear units improve restricted Boltzmann machines. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Machine Learning. June 21-24, 2010; Haifa, Israel. Omni press; 2010:807-814.
- Srivastava N, Hinton G, Krizhevsky A, Sutskever I, Salakhutdinov R. Dropout: a simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting. J Mach Learn Res. 2014;15(1):1929-1958.
- Kingma DP, Ba J. Adam: a method for stochastic optimization. arXiv. Preprint Posted online 2014. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.1412.6980
- Rasht-Behesht M, Huber C, Shukla K, Karniadakis GE. Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for wave propagation and full waveform inversions. J Geophys Res Solid Earth. 2022;127(5):e2021JB023120. doi: 10.1029/2021JB023120
