Study of the porosity of synthetic sandstones by nondestructive nuclear techniques

In this paper, nuclear techniques have been used to describe structural characteristics of ceramic samples. These samples were produced to serve as simulates of sandstones and their mainly component was silica (SiO2). Three sets of these samples with different characteristics were analyzed with the gamma ray transmission and the X-ray microtomography. They had the function to describe parameters as porosity point to point and total average porosity, for the transmission case, and 2D sections average porosity, total average porosity and size porous distribution for microtomography, as well as to investigate possible irregularities in bulk sample. The experimental set up for the gamma ray transmission technique consisted of: a 2 x 2 crystal NaI(Tl) detector, an 241Am radioactive source (59.54 keV, 100 mCi), an automatic micrometric table for the sample XZ movement and standard gamma spectrometry electronics. Lead collimators with 2 mm diameter were placed on the source way out and on the detector entrance. The microtomographic measurements were done with a Skyscan system, model 1172, with a X-ray tube with 20-100 kV of voltage range and a CCD camera. Employing gamma ray transmission method was possible to obtain overall porosity values from 25.8 to 34.0 % and from 24.8 to 29.2 % for samples with parallelepiped and cylinder shape, respectively, for ceramic I set; from 58.5 to 61.0 % and from 57.1 to 61.7 % for the same geometric shape of ceramic II set. The samples analyzed by the microtomography achieved resolutions of 1.73 μm, 0.64 μm and 1.28 μm for samples of ceramic set I, II and III, respectively. This methodology provided average total porosity values from 26.6 to 29.4 %, from 48.4 to 51.0 % and from 28.2 to 30.6 % to I, II and III ceramic sets, respectively. The porous size profiles of each ceramic sample were also measured. (author)