The best way to model interflow sediment

XiaochenXu
XiaochenXu Posts: 4 Calcite Rank Badge
edited December 2025 in Leapfrog

Happy New year all!

I would like to create a model for the coarse sediment within a larger sediment package using refine model option. It is mostly settled in a groove but can also be a lens shaped interflow as you can see below in bright yellow:

Screenshot 2025-12-31 111529.png

I've tried to use upper deposit contact and lower deposit contact of yellow against both green and purple units, resulting a patchy volume, not true to the drilling data.
Then I used intrusion model and assign it with a strong trend along the groove, but it gives me floating sausages in the purple unit……
I've also tried creating surfaces from offsetting the green/purple contact, composite the yellow unit before modelling, none of them works so far.

Has anyone had any suggestion or idea to share on this?

Appreciate much!

Xiaochen

Edit:

The interflow (and the host） also went through D1 deformation and been compressed into a tight anticline.
Can I define a up/down contact base on a curved mesh instead of a plane? Does creating deposit surface from offset surface works for multiple episodes of interflow?

image.png

Best Answers

  • SarahFurney3
    SarahFurney3 Posts: 1 Diamond Rank Badge
    Answer ✓

    Hi Xiaochen,

    Have you tried using the Interval Selection tool to separate the interflow 1 and 2? That is the first step I would take, as they look like distinct events even thought the use the same lithology. From here you could:

    1) Take it a step further using the interval selection tool and define the perfect "lens" shapes and use the deposition tool to have it lie on top of the green unit but cut through the purple. This would form a nice lens shape but would ignore the smaller outlying units of yellow.

    2) Use the intrusion surface with a structural trend from the green/purple surface, edit the compositing to convert enclosed ignored segments and simplify geology as needed. The "floating sausage" can be further constrained by making the settings in the point generation tab lower.

    As for your follow up questions:

    -Can I define a up/down contact base on a curved mesh instead of a plane? Yep, every mesh will have a "back/front" surface

    -Does creating deposit surface from offset surface works for multiple episodes of interflow? If I understand this correctly, then yes, but if you've got multiple episodes you will want to use the interval selection tool to separate the events so that the programs models them independently and doesn't try to loop them together.

    I have not previously modelled interflow sediments so I'd love to know if either of these help you out at all.

    Cheers!

    Sarah Furney

  • findlayfraser
    findlayfraser Posts: 21 Diamond Rank Badge
    Answer ✓

    My comments very much echo Sarah's here. I think your first step is to use the selection tool to define your main packages of interflow, and then take it from there. Once you separate out the main related segments and can ignore some of the more isolated ones you should start getting a much more reasonable, cleaner, result fairly quickly.

Answers

  • XiaochenXu
    XiaochenXu Posts: 4 Calcite Rank Badge

    Thanks for the answers! I'll try those options.
    The initial plan I had for this model is to test if we could move away from flagging each episode of interflow separately.

    Since most of them demonstrate similar trend, I was curious if I could group them together or use one surface to model them all.
    We already have 100+ episodes of them individually flagged, some of them are rather tightly spaced and honestly, I'm not even sure if they are the same flow or not.

    But I guess if selecting them separately is the way to go I just have to bite the bullet.

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