Spot Probe Reflectometer Measurements Core Slab Samples

Measuring Core Slab Materials 

Rock core specimens collected during surveys for oil drilling have, in a standard form, a 4” diameter. Cores are cut in half or in 1/3-2/3 sections to provide a core slab. We developed a measurement procedure based on spot probe illumination to characterize geological and/or geochemical properties of core slab specimens via their complex permittivity for frequencies between 2.5 GHz and 20 GHz. 

Why Use This Method Over a Conventional Reflectometer Method?

Conventional reflectometer methods are based on the illumination of a thin slab of air- or metal-backed material. However, in this case, only the front surface is flat and the back surface is semicircular. A measurement method was developed based on time-domain gating to separate the back-surface reflection from that of the front. Material inversion is then based on the amplitude and phase of the reflection just from the front surface. 

Different Dielectric Inversion Methods Applied to This Data

This paper presents details of the calibration for this reflectometer measurement method, along with example measurements of core slab materials. Two different inversion methods are applied to these measured data. The first is a more conventional frequency-by-frequency method for inverting complex permittivity from the amplitude and phase of the reflection. The second method applies a physical model, the Debye relaxation model, to the data. This model-based approach minimizes the errors from edge diffraction from the small sample size.