Foreword

Geomaterials are often the fundamental building blocks of infrastructure. They are the soil, sediment and rock upon which manufactured geomaterials, such as asphalt, composites and concrete are laid or poured. Geomaterials are also a fundamental foundation of modern society, providing energy through coal, gas, oil, etc. Working with these materials provides interesting, complex and difficult challenges, such as modification, construction, maintenance and repair of the building blocks as along with extraction of energy and sequestration of carbon dioxide. In this book, numerous techniques are presented to address issues that stem from the use and evaluation of geomaterials with computed tomography (CT) imagery.

CT imagery provides a basis by which many complex structures/feature within geomaterials can be visualized and evaluated. CT sections the scanned material into small parts and then reconstructs these parts into three-dimensional images. This process has seen widespread used in medical fields and has grown increasingly common in diagnosing ailments in humans. At the same time, CT has been applied to geomaterials, which are being studied for industrial and research purposes.

In this book, advances in CT are presented that are built upon petroleum research conducted in the late 1980s and was first addressed by a collective international group of researchers at GeoX2003 workshop (Japan) and then again addressed by a international effort at GeoX2006 (Aussois, France). GeoX2010 follows in the tradition of this great research by applying the latest tools and techniques to computed tomography in studies of geomaterials.

This book is a compilation of 49 papers presented at GeoX2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, March 1-3, 2010. These papers address geomaterials from many perspectives by: 1) using advanced software and numerical methods to address complex geometries efficiently and more completely; 2) applying novel imaging techniques, such as neutron and nanometer scale tomography as well as traditional x-ray computed tomography; 3) addressing issues related to energy exploration and climate change; 4) flow through porous media and 5) coupling computed tomography with geotechnical testing methods to address deformations and progress of failure in sand, rock, asphalt and concrete.

Overall, this compilation is a broad-based address of CT applications to geomaterials that has been made possible by the efforts of faculty members from Louisiana State University and the Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, Mississippi and due to the innovation and sustained research efforts by the authors, their support and their staff.

Khalid A. ALSHIBLI

Allen H. REED

All the chairs and reviewers that helped out with these papers

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