Making artificial sandstone with a wide range of porosities

Porosity as the dominant inherent property of rock has important applications in rock mechanics particularly porous media of rock such as oil reservoirs.  The heterogeneous properties of rock are related to the inherent characteristics which control the behavior of rock under stresses. If one factor such as porosity varies other inherent variables of rock are affected and effect of porosity on the mechanical behavior and properties of rock cannot be clear.  To find homogenous rock specimens having different porosities with the same others inherent properties such as gains sizes, is a difficult task or it seems impossible.  Therefore, physical modelling can be a useful tool to make a rock like material having different porosities as the other inherent factors can be kept constant.  In this paper, the constituents of cement, water and filler material having a particular granularity in two types using sand and silica have been used to make the model material.  Two techniques including compacting the mixture of model material and changing the water content of model material, have been applied to change the porosity and cylindrical specimens have been made.  Porosity and unit weight of specimens have been measure with accuracy of 0.01.  A homogenous rock like material having a wide ranges of porosities from 9.00% to 34.09% have been developed that is similar to natural sandstone.  Uniaxial compressive strength has low scatter with varying the porosity due to the homogeneity in comparison with natural sandstone.