RANDOM SIMULATION OF FRACTURE APERTURES USING R

Many rocks contain fractures whose apertures conform to distribution functions. The goal of this assignment was to create a computer program that randomly generates data conforming to a specified distribution function. The data corresponds to fracture aperture sizes in rocks. The program also calculates which fractures in the simulation are significant to flow. Significant fractures include the largest fractures contributing to 95% of total flow. It is possible for one fracture, or conduit, to contribute 95% or more of total flow.

I initially chose Matlab7 as the platform for my program. Matlab7 is able to integrate functions in code similar to C++. However, it could not randomly simulate data and after completing the flawed program, it suddenly failed to load in any Matlab compiler. Following a reassessment of the situation, I turned to an open-source statistical analysis program, R. With R, I am able to randomly simulate data and create histograms and density curves. The simulation works perfectly in R.