Laboratory Experiments on Sedimentation of Fine-grained Sediment: A prospect review

Abstract

A laboratory experiment on sedimentation is an experiment conducted under highly controlled conditions to simulate the sedimentary processes in a wide variety of sedimentary environments. It is a useful method which has been widely used in many scientific disciplines and sub-disciplines including hydraulics engineering， environmental science， environmental engineering， oceanography， sedimentology， as well as petroleum geology. The recent drastic increase in unconventional oil and gas production requires new insights into fine-grained sediment， such as processes of organic-sediment accumulation. Many equations or theories have been proposed for uncohesive sediments including physical properties of sand/clay particle， sedimentary bedforms， sedimentary landscapes， sediment gravity flows. However， because of their small grain size， and their cohesive properties， cohesive sediments present more of a challenge in the experiment and have been relatively understudied. A review is given of laboratory experiments on sedimentation of fine-grained cohesive sediments， with emphasis on the aspect of physical properties of particles， processes of erosion and deposition， sedimentary bedforms， transport mechanics and facies models， as well as organic matter accumulation and preservation. This article also discusses the organic matter transportation and accumulation in recent Qinghai Lake and proposes a hypothesis of accumulation of organic-rich fine-grained sediments. Laboratory experiments on sedimentation of fine-grained sediment are useful for both paleoenvironment reconstruction and lithofacies prediction， which can be applied to genetic analyses and prediction of sweet spots/areas in unconventional shale plays. A successful research of fine-grained sediment requires the application of methodologies and results of a broad range of scientific disciplines， a combination of physical and computational simulations， and some large-scale and long-term flume experiments.