Asymptotic analysis of cross-hole pneumatic injection tests in unsaturated fractured tuff

We present a new method to interpret three-dimensional pressure interference tests, which is based on an asymptotic analysis of late time pressure transient data. The approach yields reliable estimates of equivalent permeability and porosity without resorting to type-curve fitting or numerical inverse models. This is accomplished by analyzing the late-time behavior of type-curve solutions for pressure interference tests. We use our approach to infer the permeability and porosity of fractured tuff from cross-hole pneumatic injection test data. Their values are found to be in good agreement with those inferred from more complicated methods of data analysis. We analyze the statistical properties of the estimated equivalent permeability and porosity and observe a weak correlation between the two.