SPE 138841

Prediction of Poisson's Ratio and Young's Modulus for Hydrocarbon

Reservoirs Using Alternating Conditional Expectation Algorithm
Bandar D.Al-Anazi, SPE, KACST, Mohammed T. Al-Garni, SPE, KACST, Muffareh Tale, SPE, KACST,
Imad Al-Mushigeh, SPE, KACST

Copyright 2011, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Middle East Oil and Gas Show and Conference held in Manama, Bahrain, 2528 September 2011.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
Rock mechanics is the theoretical and applied science of the mechanical behavior of rock, the branch of mechanics concerned
with the response of rock to the force fields of its physical environment. In hydraulic fracturing, rock mechanics is important
in the determination of mechanical properties and the in-situ stress state of reservoir rock, the calculation of deformation and
failure behavior of the rock mass caused by the treatment, and the determination of the fractures final geometry

Knowledge of mechanical properties variation is of great importance for Petroleum Engneering .mechanical properties is often
measured in the laboratory from cores. Lab measurements is expensive and time consuming .Many correlations and models
were used have been proposed to estimate mechanical properties using some lab measurements data. Different artifacial
intelegence techniques were implemented in several studies. This work describes the use of Alternating Conditional
Expectation Algorithm technique to estimate Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus as a function of Depth with lab porosity
Overburden Stresses Pore Pressure ,Minimum Horizontal Stress measurements and Bulk Density (RHOB),DT Compressional
and DT Shear from logs data In this study, 602 data points of lab measurements and log data were used The proposed models
evolved estimates Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus with good accuracy with correlation coefficient ( R2) of 0.994 and
0.974

Introduction
Mechanical properties usually, of concern for treatment design and analysis, are (Clark,1977) elastic properties, such as
Youngs modulus (or shear modulus) and Poissons ratio; (Gidley et al ,1989) strength properties, such as fracture toughness
and tensile and compressive strength; (Bharucha,2004) poroelastic parameters describing the compressibility of the rock
matrix compared with the compressibility of the bulk rock under specific fluid flow (or migration) conditions. Stress not only
controls or influences most aspects of fracture behavior, but also influences the values of both reservoir properties and
mechanical properties of the rock. For example, increased confining stress will generally result in increased strength
decreased permeability and porosity , and mixed results for Youngs modulus and Poissons ratio (Gidley et al ,1989).

Rock mechanics is the science dealing with the theoretical and applied behavior of rock due to either external natural or man
made stresses. Rock mechanics are widely used by civil as well as mining engineers long time ago. Recently rock mechanics
has been applied to solve problems in many aspects of petroleum engineering such as drilling, reservoir and production
engineering In the following sections, light will be shed on the involvement of rock mechanics on solving the many problems
that may encountered during the various petroleum engineering activities such as drilling, reservoir, and production
engineering

Various rock properties are required as an input in any attempt to solve various engineering problems. It is obvious that rock
mechanical testing of cores must be designed according to the purpose of the investigation. If the objective is to predict
borehole instability, then the testing procedures may not be the same as for example in reservoir compaction.

These outlined testing procedures was set to minimize human errors. Rock mechanical data are obtained either by testing
representative rock samples in laboratory or by analyzing field records. Triaxial testing of rock samples provides important
data such as failure criteria, frictional properties apparent cohesion and angle of internal friction), arid elastic properties
2 SPE 138841

(Youngs modulus, bulk modulus, Poissons ratio, etc.). Many other properties can be measured based on rock testing such as,
pore and bulk compressibility, permeability stress sensitivity, crushing resistance, P & S velocities, swelling, etc. (Al-Awad,
2001).

Details of these tests can be found in any professional rock mechanics Field data may provide us with formation lithology,
continuous record of formation porosity (as in indication of the rock strength), formation fluids analysis, reservoir geology,
etc. Table (1). Well logs provide continuous data versus depth, but do not measure directly the parameters that are needed for
a rock mechanical analysis. Rock mechanics have been used to investigate and solve several problems in the oil industry.
Table (2) summarizes these problems management techniques and data required.
Table1 Type of rock mechanical tests [Al-Awad, 2001].

Uniaxial tensile and compressive strength.

Triaxial compressive strength and failure criteria.
Cement-casing and Cement-formation bond strength.
Direct and indirect shear strength.
Permeability stress sensitivity.
Elastic and Frictional properties.
Matrix and pore compressibility.
P & S velocities.
Propant crushing resistance.
Swelling and wet/dry rock strength.

Table 2 Implementation of rock mechanics in solving petroleum engineering problems [After Al-Awad ,1998].

phase Problem Potential solutions Data required

-rock elastic properties.

Drilling Borehole instability -rock failure criteria.
Engineering -in-situ stress stale.
-changing mud weight.
-rock swelling characteristics.
-selecting mud type.
-well orientation.
-controlling mud cake efficiency.
-well inclination.
-managing well orientation.
-dulling fluid properties..
-mud cake efficiency
Sand production -selecting perforation location
-selecting completion type.
Perforation stability
-controlling fluid drawdown.
-controlling production rate. -rock elastic properties.
Production -managing propant crushing -rock failure criteria.
Fracturing height
Engineering resistance. -in-situ stress state.
and orientation
-selecting propant type. -rock swelling characteristics.
-selecting fracturing fluid type. -well orientation
-measuring rock compressibility. -well inclination.
-controlling injection rate. -reservoir description.
Water injection
-controlling water temperature.
-testing water-rock compatibility.
-controlling injection rate.
SPE 138841 3

eserve -rock elastic properties.

alculation
Reservoir -rock failure criteria.
ompaction -selecting well location.
Engineering -in-situ stress state.
-controlling production rate
ubsidence
-controlling injection rate. -rook swelling characteristics.
Reservoir stress -well orientation.
nsitivity
-well inclination.

-reservoir description.

-permeability sensitivity to stress.

Measurement of Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus

The two main elastic constants which are usually used in most rock failure models are Poissons ratio and Youngs modulus.
Youngs modulus is the measure of the stiffness of the rock material, i.e. the sample resistance against the compressive stress
(load). Poissons ratio is a measure of the simultaneous change in elongation and in cross-sectional area within the elastic
range during a tensile or compressive test (Al-Awad, 2001). Elastic constants are evaluated from the stress versus lateral and
axial strains measured in conjunction with the triaxial compressive testing. Elastic constants can be estimated from using the
following equations [1 and 2]:

z 2
E = z1 (1)
z1 z 2

x1 x 2
= ( 2)
z1 z 2

In addition to the in-situ or minimum horizontal stress, other rock mechanical properties are important when designing a
hydraulic fracture. Poissons ratio is defined as the ratio of lateral expansion to longitudinal contraction for a rock under a
uniaxial stress condition (Howard, G. C., and Fast, C.,1970). The value of Poissons ratio is used to convert the effective
vertical stress component into an effective horizontal stress component. The effective stress is defined as the total stress minus
the pore pressure (Alkhathami,2007)

The theory used to compute fracture dimensions is based upon linear elasticity. To apply this theory, the modulus of the
formation is an important parameter. Youngs modulus is defined as the ratio of stress to strain for uniaxial stress (Howard,
and Fast, 1970). The modulus of a material is a measure of the stiffness of the material. If the modulus is large, the material is
stiff. In hydraulic fracturing, a stiff rock will result in more narrow fractures. If the modulus is low, the fractures will be wider.
The modulus of a rock will be a function of the lithology, porosity, fluid type, and other variables. Table 3 and 4 illustrates
typical ranges for Youngs Modulus and Poisson's ratio as a function of lithology.
4 SPE 138841

Table 3 : Ranges of Youngs Modulus for Various Lithologies (After Howard ,1970)

Lithology Youngs Modulus

Soft Sandstone 2-5 106

Hard Sandstone 6-10106

Limestone 8-12106

Coal 0.1-1106

Shale 1-10106

Table 4 : Ranges of Poisson's ratio for Various Lithologies [After Bowles, 1996].

Lithology Poisson's ratio

Saturated clay 0.4 to 0.5

Rock 0.1 to 0.4

Sand, gravelly sand 0.3 to 0.4

Silt 0.3 to 0.35

Sandy clay 0.2 to 0.3

Loess 0.1 to 0.3

Alternating Conditional Expectation Algorithm

This work systematically uses a technique that reveals the underlying statistical relationships among variables corrupted by
random error. The method of alternating conditional expectations (ACE) developed by Breiman and Friedman (1985) is
intended to alleviate the main drawback of parametric regression. In nonparametric regression a priori knowledge of the
functional relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables is not required. In fact, one of the main
results of non-parametric regression is the determination of the actual form of this relationship.
A model predicting the value of y from the values of x1, x2,. . . xn is written in the following form:

y f z

where,
z z and, z f x

The functions f1(.), f2(.),. . . fn(.) are called variable transformations yielding the transformed independent variables z1, z2,. . .
zn. The function f(.) is the transformation for the dependent variable. In fact the main interest is its inverse: f -1(.), yielding the
dependent variable y from the transformed dependent variable z.
Given N observation points, the best transformation functions f1(.), f2(.),. . ., fn(.)and f -1 (.) are found not as algebraic
expressions, but as relationships defined point-wise. The method of alternating conditional expectations constructs and
modifies the individual transformations to achieve maximum correlation in the transformed space. Graphically this means that
the plot of z f x against , should be as close to the 45o straight line as possible. The resulting
individual transformations are given in the form of a point-by-point plot and/or table, thus in any subsequent application
(graphical or algebraic) interpolation needed to obtain the transformed variables and to apply the inverse transformation to
predict "y". Obviously, the smoother the transformation, the more justified and straightforward the interpolation is. Therefore,
some kind of restriction on smoothness is built into the ACE algorithm. In other words, based on the concept of conditional
expectation, the correlation in transformed space is maximized by iteratively adjusting the individual transformations subject
to a smoothness condition.
SPE 138841 5

The particular realization of the algorithm, GRACE (Xue et al., 1997), used here consists of two parts. The first part provides
the transformations in the form of tables and the second part allows the user to construct the final algebraic approximations
using curve fitting in a commercial spreadsheet program. Fortunately, many physically sound problems have rather simple
shapes of the individual transformations, and can be well approximated by low order polynomials. GRACE also has an option
to reconcile the observed data set to the gleaned-out underlying statistical dependency. The option provides reconciled
values for all the observations by suggesting slight changes in the observed values. The adjustment is done such that in
transformed space the reconciled observations follow the 45o straight line perfectly, while the overall change in each observed
value is kept to a minimum (Xue et al., 1997). The plot of adjusted versus observed variable offers a deeper insight into the
effect of measurement noise and/or the possibility of a hidden variable.

Results and discussion

A total of 602 data points were used to develop a Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus model using Alternating Conditional
Expectation (ACE) algorithm. It consists of (Depth ,Porosity .Overburden Stresses ,Pore Pressure ,Minimum Horizontal Stress
measurements Bulk Density (RHOB),DT Compressional and DT Shear) and the experimentally measured Poissons Ratio and
Youngs Modulus. The data were randomized and divided into two sets one for model building (training) and the second for
blind testing and validation.
The ACE model was built based on 400 data points. The rest of the data were used to validate and blind test the model
efficiency. The data covers wide range of logs and core Properties and Table 5 lists the ranges of the data used in building and
testing the ACE model.
With the thought that a correlation of improved accuracy could be derived, Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus using the
GRACE technique were determined. The new Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus correlations developed is given as
follows:

Poisson's Ratio Correlation = -1.3791E-05X2 + 3.3604E-02 X + 2.9519E-01

Where,

X1= 1.3331E-05Y2D - 3.5494E-01YD + 2.3429E+03

X2= -1.8226E+01Y2 - 7.7338E+00Y + 2.2420E-01
X3= -1.9457E-01Y2BD - 2.4205E+00YBD+ 8.1459E+00
X4= -1.0179E-02Y2DTC + 1.1847E+00YDTC - 3.3300E+01
X5= -7.2946E-04Y2DTS + 2.2360E-01YDTS - 1.4111E+01
X6= 3.9049E-06Y2OS - 7.1910E-02YOS + 2.7104E+02
X7= 1.6913E-04Y2PP - 2.5521E+00YPP + 9.6278E+03
X8= 1.1162E+01Y2MHS + 3.1808E+00YMHS - 1.6239E+01

Young's Modulus Correlation = 5.6740E+03 X2 + 1.0391E+06 X + 7.3636E+06

Where,

X1= -5.5390E-06Y2D + 1.3394E-01YD - 8.0971E+02

X2= 9.1182E+00Y2 + 2.5718E+00Y - 7.8467E-02
X3= 7.2198E-02Y2BD + 2.7950E+00YBD - 8.2461E+00
X4= 9.8284E-03Y2DTC - 1.0787E+00YDTC + 2.9042E+01
X5= 1.0655E-03Y2DTS - 3.0169E-01YDTS + 1.8388E+01
X6= 6.6071E-07Y2OS - 1.7248E-02YOS + 1.1256E+02
X7= -2.5998E+01Y2PP + 5.2777E+01YPP - 2.6670E+01
X8= -3.7016E-05Y2MHS + 5.5840E-01YMHS - 2.1059E+03

The correlations was blindly tested to estimate the Poissons Ratio and Youngs Modulus using the rest of the data (202 data
points) not implemented in the model building. Figure 1 and 2 are a cross plot of the models indicating the performance of the
ACE model proposed Average absolute error (ARE) characterizing the accuracy and average absolute relative error (AARE)
indicating the precision of the proposed and tested models were calculated and listed in Table 6. The two numbers indicate the
accuracy of the proposed model for the data used in this work.
6 SPE 138841

Conclusions
An attempt has been made in this work to develop an ACE for elastic parameters prediction with a non-linear relationship and
mapping between the petrophysical and geomechanical data and elastic modals. It has been shown a good performance in term
of accuracy.
The performance of the model as carried out by the test data set shows better prediction of Youngs modulus and Poissons
ratio . It was shown that using this method, engineers can easily predict geomechanical rock properties with accuracies similar
to real drilling core measurements (static module) where rock samples are not available.

Nomenclature

E= Youngs modulus.
= Poissons ratio.
z1 = Stress at axial point z1.
z 2 = Stress at axial point z2.
z1 = Strain at axial point z1.
z 2 = Strain at axial point z2.
x1 = Strain at lateral point z1.
x 2 = Strain at lateral point z2.
D = Depth
= Porosity
BD = Bulk Density (RHOB)
DTC = DT Compressional
DTS = DT Shear.
OS = Overburden Stresses
PP = Pore Pressure.
MHS = Minimum Horizontal Stress.
ARE = average relative error

/ /

AARE= average absolute relative error

| / | /
SPE 138841 7

References

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Requirement of the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering ,King Saud University, January , 2007

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Horizontal Oil Wells., SPE-SA0526, The 2005 SPE Technical Symposium of Saudi Arabia Section held in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 14-16
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subjected to uniaxial compression., International Journal of Rock Mechanics & Mining Sciences 44 (2007) 321331.

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8 SPE 138841

Table 5 : Properties of Rock mechanics Data Used in the Study

Max Min Ave SD

Depth ,Ft 12150 11850 12000 86.081

Porosity, % 0.21 0 0.041 0.039
RHOB, g/cm3 2.98 2.312 2.68 0.113
DT Compressional , s/ft 78.94 44.34 51.24 5.245
DT Shear, s/ft 138.08 73.18 95.17 9.04
Poisson's Ratio 0.374 0.178 0.292 0.032
Young's Modulus, Psi 9951699 2569305 6408724 1258068
Overburden Stresses, Psi 13182.75 12857.25 13020 94.19863
Pore Pressure, Psi 7564.23 7525.23 7544.73 11.28647
Minimum Horizontal Stress, MPa 1.129482 0.822005 1.032985 0.058615

Table 6: Error Analysis of The Proposed and Investigated PR & YM Models.

ARE, % AARE, % R2
Poisson's Ratio 2.491 2.489 0.994
Young's Modulus 1.817 0.410 0.974

R2 = 0.9949
0.4
Poisson's Ratio Predicted

0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4
Poisson's Ratio Measured

Figure 1: The Relationship between PR measured and PR predicted

SPE 138841 9

2
R = 0.9741
1.E+07

Young's Modulus Predicted, GPa

1.E+07
9.E+06
8.E+06
7.E+06
6.E+06
5.E+06
4.E+06
3.E+06
2.E+06
1.E+06
0.E+00
0 1E+06 2E+06 3E+06 4E+06 5E+06 6E+06 7E+06 8E+06 9E+06 1E+07 1E+07

Young's Modulus Measured,GPa

Figure 2 :The Relationship between YM measured and YM predicted