Reconstruction of multiphase microstructure based on statistical descriptors

The microscopic structural features of porous media directly affect their macroscopic properties (e.g., mechanical, electromagnetic, capillary, and transport properties). As for sandstone, the distributions of the clay and the pore in three-dimensional (3D) space have important effects on its electrical conductivity and transport property. In this paper, the experiment of the two-dimensional (2D) and 3D reconstructions of multiphase microstructure (pore, grain, and clay) based on 2D images was carried out. In the reconstruction procedure of simulated annealing for multiphase microstructure, three independent two-point correlation functions and two lineal-path functions are chosen as the morphological information descriptors. Another important morphological descriptor of microstructure is the two-point cluster function, which is used to validate the reconstruction results. From the result of the 2D reconstruction, it is found that the 2D generation is similar with the original 2D image in morphological information and their correlation functions match very well, which illustrate that the presented method has the ability to generate the 2D microstructure from the original 2D image for multiphase microstructure. In the case of 3D reconstruction, the two-point correlation functions and lineal-path functions of the 3D generation are in excellent agreement with that of the original 2D image, and comparison of the two-point cluster functions from the slices of the 3D generation with the original image reflects the similarity and the variability of the slices in real sandstone, which illustrate that the presented methodology is effective and proper for the reconstruction of 3D microstructure based on the 2D image.