Experiments and Simulations of Fully Hydro‐Mechanically Coupled Response of Rough Fractures Exposed to High‐Pressure Fluid Injection

Vogler, Daniel; Settgast, Randolph R.; Annavarapu, Chandrasekhar; Madonna, Claudio; Bayer, Peter; Amann, Florian

doi:10.1002/2017jb015057

Cited by 81 publications

(50 citation statements)

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“…The inflow rate is calculated by integrating the fluid velocity over the x-plane cross-section at the left side (inflow direction) of the y-plane. The total fluid flow rate through the fracture changes most drastically at initial normal load increases during small normal loads, where fractures are known to experience the largest aperture closure relative to increases in normal load [3,25,54,46,22]. While fracture closure is more pronounced during early normal loading stages, fluid flow paths through regions of large aperture widths persist even at higher loading stages, as their large-aperture regions may not close entirely (Fig.…”

Section: Fluid Flow In Closing Fracturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the mechanical behavior of a fracture, the highly variable fracture surface topographies yield a complex distribution of contact area and a nonlinear mechanical response to normal or shear loading [3,36,19,25,49,40]. Mechanical loading normal to the fracture surface results in convergent fracture closure behavior with increasing load, as more and more area of the fracture comes into contact and local compressive stresses at contact areas increase [3,37,25,54,44,47,46,22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the hydraulic behavior of fractures, rough fracture surface topographies result in highly heterogeneous aperture fields, which characterize the mechanical gap between two fracture surfaces [56,55]. These heterogeneous aperture fields are naturally subject to change with mechanical loading and yield complex fluid flow patterns through fractures [42,6,43,49,28,46]. While an increase in mechanical loading leads to fracture closure, this can also result in elevated fluid pressures, as larger fluid pressure gradients are required to sustain fluid flow rates through closing fractures [44].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simulation of hydro-mechanically coupled processes in rough rock fractures using an immersed boundary method and variational transfer operators

et al. 2019

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Hydro-mechanical processes in rough fractures are highly non-linear and govern productivity and associated risks in a wide range of reservoir engineering problems. To enable high-resolution simulations of hydro-mechanical processes in fractures, we present an adaptation of an immersed boundary method to compute fluid flow between rough fracture surfaces. The solid domain is immersed into the fluid domain and both domains are coupled by means of variational volumetric transfer operators. The transfer operators implicitly resolve the boundary between the solid and the fluid, which simplifies the setup of fracture simulations with complex surfaces. It is possible to choose different formulations and discretization schemes for each subproblem and it is not necessary to remesh the fluid grid. We use benchmark problems and real fracture geometries to demonstrate the following capabilities of the presented approach: (1) Resolving the boundary of the rough 1 arXiv:1812.08572v2 [physics.geo-ph] 8 Aug 2019 fracture surface in the fluid; (2) Capturing fluid flow field changes in a fracture which closes under increasing normal load; and (3) Simulating the opening of a fracture due to increased fluid pressure.

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Section: Fluid Flow In Closing Fracturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Simulation of hydro-mechanically coupled processes in rough rock fractures using an immersed boundary method and variational transfer operators

et al. 2019

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“…Specifically, increasing mechanical load normal to the fracture yields nonlinear, convergent fracture closure behavior, where increasingly larger load increments have to be applied for a given closure increment [4,35,72,61,62]. Changes of the mechanical loading distribution on the fracture alter contact area and the aperture distribution across the fracture plane, which will yield complex aperture fields [60,40,63]. As a result, fluid flow fields in these aperture fields become highly heterogeneous and change with the loading [59,8,74,73].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling of hydro-mechanical processes in heterogeneous fracture intersections using a fictitious domain method with variational transfer operators

Planta¹,

Vogler²,

Chen³

et al. 2020

Comput Geosci

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Fluid flow in rough fractures and the coupling with the mechanical behaviour of the fractures pose great difficulties for numerical modelling approaches, due to complex fracture surface topographies, the nonlinearity of hydromechanical processes and their tightly coupled nature. To this end, we have adapted a fictitious domain method to enable the simulation of hydromechanical processes in fracture-intersections. The main characteristic of the method is the immersion of the fracture, modelled as a linear elastic solid, in the surrounding computational fluid domain, modelled with the incompressible Navier Stokes equations. The fluid and the solid problems are coupled with variational transfer operators. Variational transfer operators are also used to solve contact within the fracture using a dual mortar approach and to generate problem specific fluid meshes. With respect to our applications, the key features of the method are the usage of different finite element discretizations for the solid and the fluid problem and the automatically generated representation of the fluid-solid boundary. We demonstrate that the presented methodology resolves small-scale roughness on the fracture surface, while capturing fluid flow field changes during mechanical loading. Starting with 2D/3D benchmark simulations of intersected fractures, we end with an intersected fracture composed of complex 1 fracture surface topographies, which are in contact under increasing loads. The contributions of this article are: (1) the application of the fictitious domain method to study flow in fractures with intersections, (2) a mortar based contact solver for the solid problem, (3) generation of problem specific grids using the geometry information from the variational transfer operators.

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“…Ewing and Jaynes [16] also conducted extensive numerical studies on factors such as size of the fracture and shape of the mesh that affect solute transport in a single fracture, and Jeong and Song [10] examined fluid flow and solute transport in a single fracture with variable aperture distribution that is generated using fractal technique. Recently, Vogler et al [17] presented the fully coupled hydro-mechanical method to investigate the effect of fracture heterogeneity on fluid flow through fractures at laboratory scale but they did not consider solute transport in fractures with hydro-mechanical effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Study of Spatial Behavior of Solute Particle Transport in Single Fracture with Variable Apertures

Jeong

2018

Water

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Abstract:The aim of this study is to numerically analyze spatial behaviors of solute particle transport in a single fracture with spatially correlated variable apertures under application of effective normal stress conditions. The numerical results show that solute particle transport in a single fracture is strongly affected by spatial correlation length of variable apertures and applied effective normal stress. As spatial correlation length increases, mean residence time of solute particles decreases and tortuosity and Peclet number (a dimensionless number representing the relationship between the rate of advection of solute particles by the flow and the rate of diffusion of solute particles) also decreases. These results indicate that the geometry of the aperture distribution is favorable to solute particle transport when the spatial correlation length is increased. However, as effective normal stress increases, the mean residence time and tortuosity tend to increase but the Peclet number decreases. The main reason for a decreasing Peclet number is that the solute particle is transported by one or two channels with relatively higher localized flow rates owing to increase in contact areas resulting from increasing effective normal stress. Based on the numerical results of the solute particle transport produced in this study, an exponential-type correlation formula between the mean residence time and the effective normal stress is proposed.

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Experiments and Simulations of Fully Hydro‐Mechanically Coupled Response of Rough Fractures Exposed to High‐Pressure Fluid Injection

Cited by 81 publications

References 50 publications

Simulation of hydro-mechanically coupled processes in rough rock fractures using an immersed boundary method and variational transfer operators

Simulation of hydro-mechanically coupled processes in rough rock fractures using an immersed boundary method and variational transfer operators

Modelling of hydro-mechanical processes in heterogeneous fracture intersections using a fictitious domain method with variational transfer operators

Numerical Study of Spatial Behavior of Solute Particle Transport in Single Fracture with Variable Apertures

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