Hydraulic fracturing is a popular method used in the petroleum industry to increase the well performance by improving the permeability of the reservoir. However, while there has been extensive research on the development of the length of the fracture, the fractured height has been frequently assumed to be equal to the reservoir thickness. The objective of this paper is to study the influence of formation rock characteristics and the impact of underground stress state on the development of the fracture height. To achieve this objective, a finite element model was built using a cohesive zone method to predict the development of fracture height in time and space. Different scenarios were then effectuated by varying the values of the primary formation variables which are the Young’s modulus, the porosity, the Poisson ratio, the fracture energy, and the maximum horizontal stress of the reservoir and of the beddings. This research therefore covered principally uncontrolled factors which are the formation properties and stress state underground, which contribute mostly to the erroneous prediction in fracture height. The findings revealed that the fracture height was strongly influenced by the properties of the formation and of the adjacent layers. However, the influence levels are not the same for different kinds of properties. This study showed that the most influential mechanical property of the rock on the fracture height is the Young’s modulus. Regarding the porosity, its effect on the fracture height is extremely small. However, it is worth noting that the porosity is still an important parameter in hydraulic fracturing because it can be used to estimate others parameters and to model the development of fracture geometry which are width, length, and height. Practical suggestions for real-life hydraulic fracturing jobs can be deduced from this study, in order to control the fracture height as accurately as possible, and to decrease financial cost by concentrating mostly on the high influential factors instead of doing all kinds of tests for other less influential mechanical properties of the rock.

Although hydraulic fracturing has been practiced all over the world, the research on how the fracture height develops in time and space still leaves some missing gaps. The fracture height has been considered in most cases equal to the pay zone thickness, and the influence of temperature in this process has been omitted. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to study the effect of temperature, rock mechanical properties, and fluid injection rate on the development of the fracture geometry, especially on the fracture height. A multiphysics model was implemented using cohesive elements in a finite element model generated with equations in fracture mechanics. Once the model was calibrated with experimental data, it was used to conduct sensitivity studies to reveal the influence of main contributed factors such as the properties of rocks and fluids used in hydraulic fracturing, the injection rate of fracturing liquid, and especially the influence of temperature because this last aspect was omitted in literature review from previous studies. The results indicated that the fracture height depended strongly on the rock properties, not only the rock in the pay zone but also the ones in the adjacent layers. Besides, the influence of the fluid injection rate on the fracturing height is so great that it overwhelms the influence of temperature and mechanical parameters. Moreover, the impact of the leak-off coefficient is much less remarkable than that of the fluid viscosity, which demonstrates why in reality it is important to control the viscosity to achieve desirable results. This study can be applied in real life problems to predict fracture’s geometry generated in well stimulations.