The coupling effects of pore structure and rock mineralogy on the pre-Darcy behaviors in tight sandstone and shale

The pore structure and mineral composition play a crucial role in controlling the water flow behaviors of low-permeability media, which is characterized by threshold pressure gradient (TPG) and nonlinear flow curve. To figure out the coupling effects of these two factors on pre-Darcy flow regimes, water flow experiments were conducted on four tight sandstones, three shales and one fractured shale. The results indicate that both the TPG and pseudo threshold pressure gradient (PTPG) decrease with an increase in total porosity and macropores porosity. The variation of the nonlinear exponent (n) with total porosity and macropore porosity can be described by an exponential function with three parameters. The clay minerals and brittle minerals exert completely opposite influence on the variation of pre-Darcy flow parameters (PTPG, TPG and n). Both TPG/PTPG and n increase with increasing clay content while reduce with increase in the brittle minerals content. Theoretical analyses based on the disjoining pressure demonstrate that immovable water and electro-viscous effect are mainly responsible for water flow deviating from Darcy's law in tight sandstone and shale. Calculation results show that the proportion of immovable water of intact samples ranges from 23.46% to 89.73%, the movable water content ranges from 10.27%–76.54%. The pre-Darcy flow parameters exponentially increase with increase in immovable water content while exponentially decrease with increasing proportion of movable water. For the shale sample used in this work, the immovable water and electro-viscous effect contributing to the pre-Darcy flow account for 81.11%–90.35% and 9.58%–18.51%, respectively. The different flow regimes are controlled by the pore diameter and the thickness of water with shear fluidity. If the diameter of interconnected pores is larger than 10 μm, the Darcy flow regime dominates. When the diameter of minor pore throat of the flow channels are less than 33.82 nm for sandstones and 37.68 nm for shales, the movement of water in this flow channel would generate the TPG.