Page 3 - Physical Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis

Physical Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis

Presenting a rigorous treatment of the physical and mechanical basis for the modeling of
sedimentary basins, this book supplies geoscientists with practical tools for creating their
own models. It begins with an introduction to the properties of porous media, linear elastic-
ity, continuum mechanics and rock compressibility – providing a thorough grounding for
their use later in the text. A chapter on the modeling of burial histories is then followed by
a series of chapters on heat flow, subsidence, rheology, flexure and gravity, which consider
sedimentary basins in the broader context of the Earth’s lithosphere. Later chapters then
cover the topics of pore space cementation, compaction and fluid flow.
This volume introduces basic, state-of-the-art models and demonstrates how results can
be easily reproduced with simple tools such as MATLAB and Octave (codes are available
online at www.cambridge.org/9780521761253). Throughout the book the main equations
are derived from first principles, and their basic solutions are obtained and then applied.
More technical details are supplied in notes, and the text is illustrated with real-world
examples, applications and test exercises. This book is therefore a key resource for graduate
students, academic researchers and oil industry professionals looking for an accessible
introduction to quantitative modeling of sedimentary basins.

MAGNUS WANGEN has worked in the field of sedimentary basin-modeling since the late
1980s – conducting research on a wide range of topics. He obtained a Dr. Scient. degree
in applied mathematics from the University of Oslo in 1993 with a thesis on the modeling
of heat and fluid flow in sedimentary basins. Since the early 1990s he has developed two
complementary basin simulators used by the oil industry. The first simulator deals with heat
flow on a lithospheric scale, fluid flow, compaction and overpressure in sedimentary basins
through the geohistory, while the second simulates hydrocarbon generation and migration.
He is currently a research scientist at the Institute for Energy Technology in Norway. This
book is based on a course in basin analysis that Dr. Wangen taught for a number of years
while an assistant professor at UNIK (an affiliate of the University of Oslo at Kjeller).