The present paper concerns itself with the use of morphological information from the 3D image of a rock microstructure to extract parameters needed to model the compaction of porous sandstones. We propose to test on the mineral framework a tool that is already employed in the simulation of mercury injection capillary pressure experiments (MICP) (see [1-2] for implementations and [3] for background on MICP) and, in particular, we investigate the existence of a characteristic grain contact radius. As a starting point, results from hydrostatic loading of two porous sandstones of similar porosities, the Castlegate sandstone (?~26%) and the Boise sandstone (?~29%), are presented. The mechanical data reveals a factor of almost 4 between the values measured for the critical grain crushing pressure
. As a way to connect microstructural parameters to the observed strength contrast, we test the use of the morphological analysis on high resolution X-ray CT images of both rocks. In comparing our findings with the already existing model of Zhang and Wong [4-5], we propose that the intergranular contact radius information extracted from the image analysis be explicitly incorporated into the modeling of the strength of porous sandstones.
