Testing and Calibration of a Low-Cost Custom Mechanical Property Testing System

Undergraduate #427
Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Materials Science

Usama Sultan - California State University, Bakersfield
Co-Author(s): Grecia Roman, Taft College, Taft, California Dayanand Saini, California State University, Bakersfield, California

---

In this research project, a low-cost custom mechanical property testing system that had been built for studying the mechanical behavior of hydrocarbon bearing reservoir rocks and overlying seals was tested and calibrated. For that, uniaxial compression tests were performed for generating stress versus strain curves that were subsequently used for deducing two mechanical properties namely Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio for three standard metals namely Aluminum, copper, and zinc. The experimentally measured Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio values were compared with the published values. The results were found comparable. The experimental work conducted in this project has also provided an opportunity to test the functionality of this newly built low-cost custom experimental setup and to fine tune the experimental procedures for future uniaxial testing of representative samples of reservoir and overlying cap rocks of potential geologic CO2 storage sites in California. For further reducing the operating cost of planned high-pressure high-temperature triaxial testing using the developed system, a mold was successfully designed using a computer aided design software and 3D printed for in-house production of an enclosure membrane. This membrane will be used to house the rock samples and separate the sample from the hydraulic fluid that is used to impose stress in radial direction representing overburden pressure in triaxial measuerement of mechanical properties of the reservoir and caprock samples.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): This project is funded by the National Science Foundation CREST grant awarded to California State University, Bakersfield (Award no. 1547784).

Faculty Advisor: Dayanand Saini, dsaini@csub.edu

Role: I performed the testing and calibration experiments.