A Physically Based Approach for Estimating Hydraulic Conductivity fromHPTPressure and Flowrate

The hydraulic profiling tool (HPT) is widely used to generate profiles of relative permeability vs. depth. In this work, prior numerical modeling results are used to develop a relationship between probe advance rate V (cm/s), probe diameter D (cm), water injection rate Q (mL/min), corrected pressure P-c (psi), and hydraulic conductivity K (feet/d) K = E(0.1235 VD2 + 0.119Q)P-c(-1.017) where E is an empirically derived hydraulic efficiency factor. The relationship is validated by 23 HPT profiles that, after averaging K vertically, were similar to slug test results in adjoining monitoring wells. The best fit value of E for these profiles was 2.02. This equation provides a physically based approach for generating hydraulic conductivity profiles with HPT tooling.

Automated summary

This study establishes a relationship between probe advance rate, probe diameter, water injection rate, corrected pressure, and hydraulic conductivity using numerical modeling results. The relationship is validated and found to be accurate in generating hydraulic conductivity profiles with the HPT tooling, providing a physically based approach for this purpose.