Fracturing Proppant Quality Estimation Based on Fuzzy Connectedness and Shape Similarity

To improve the accuracy and efficiency of measuring fracturing proppant sphericity and roundness, a measurement scheme is designed by combining fuzzy connectedness and shape similarity. Firstly, in the proppant images collected by the microscope, according to the color characteristics of the test placement plane’s hole and proppant, the region of each proppant and that of the hole without proppant are marked separately. Secondly, based on the feature of holes without proppant, the statistical method of labeling connected components is used to only reserve all the proppant regions. Thirdly, select a part of the region of each proppant as the seed region to calculate the fuzzy connectedness map between seed regions and other regions. Fourthly, select the appropriate connectedness threshold for each proppant based on histogram of fuzzy connectedness map of each proppant region to obtain the accurate region of each proppant. Finally, the shape similarity measurement method based on Hu moment is used to determine the sphericity and roundness of each proppant by measuring the similarity between the region of each proppant and that of 20 particles in the standard template. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is consistent with manual measurement flow, and can avoid the human labor, meanwhile, the accuracy of measurement is basically consistent with the results of manual measurement.

Journal of Marine Science and Engineering