Experimental and Simulation Analysis of Fractured Reservoir Experiencing Different Stress Conditions

Abstract

Flow through the fracture is usually estimated by cubic law, which assumes flow to occur between two parallel plates. The cubic law is valid to represent the flow through the fracture system if the matrix permeability is very low to provide any significant flow contribution. However, in high permeability rocks, the flow occurs through both fracture and matrix systems. Flow through matrix may sometimes exceed that through the fractures under increased stress acting on the reservoirs. Under these circumstances, the cubic law should be modified by combining the weighted average of the permeabilities in order to account for flow through matrix. In this paper we present the amount of flow through fracture and matrix system based on modified cubic law equations by conducting a series of laboratory experiments on fractured cores under different stress conditions. The flow rate through fracture and matrix system and the pressure drop were matched using simulation. X-ray CT was used to determine the fracture aperture and saturation distributions. In addition, the saturation distributions from simulation results were compared to X-ray CT Scan results.

Experimental and Numerical Simulation Studies of Different Modes of CO2 Injection in Fractured Carbonate Cores

“…The fractures were also represented by unit porosity because it was artificially made with a saw (Guzman, R.E. and Aziz, K. 1992;Muralidharan, V. et al 2004). Fig.…”

A new model for calculating permeability of natural fractures in dual-porosity reservoir

“…There is no clear standard method used in analyzing the sensitivity of fractures. According to laboratory investigations, under normal pressure, the stress sensitivity of natural fractures is strong with great potential of aperture variation (Khan et al, 2000;Muralidharan et al, 2004;Petunin et al, 2011). Xiang et al (2003) has studied the stress sensitivity of fracture-pore reservoir system, and believed that the stress sensitivity of artificial fractures, natural fractures and pore types of carbonate rock samples weakened sequentially.…”

Experimental Investigations on the Flow Dynamics and Abandonment Pressure for CO2 Sequestration and Oil Recovery in Artificially Fractured Cores

“…They observed that the breakthrough time was reduced significantly and a much higher recovery was obtained with viscosified water followed by CO 2 compared to continuous CO 2 injection. • Muralidharan et al (5) conducted experimental and simulation studies to investigate the effect of different stress conditions (overburden pressure) on fracture/matrix permeability and fracture width. They concluded that during constant injection, average fracture permeability decreased by approximately 91% and the average mean fracture aperture decreased approximately 71%, while increasing overburden pressure from 500 -1,500 psi.…”