Hydraulic Fracturing of Soft Formations in The Gulf Coast

Ayoub, Joseph A.; Kirksey, Jim; Malone, B.P.; Norman, W.D.

doi:10.2118/23805-ms

Cited by 26 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…[3] In engineering practices, subsurface fluid injection has been widely employed for applications such as grouting for ground improvement to reduce the liquefaction potential of cohesionless soils, to raise the ground elevation, or to compensate the volume loss due to ground surface settlement [Mitchell and Katti, 1981;Au et al, 2003;Woodward, 2005;Germanovich and Murdoch, 2010]; construction of permeable reactive barriers for soil remediation [Hocking, 1996]; injection of carbon dioxide for geological storage [Bachu, 2000;Hovorka et al, 2004;Lucier et al, 2006] or for enhanced oil or coalbed methane recovery [Orr Jr. and Taber, 1984;Blunt et al, 1993;White et al, 2005]; subsurface disposal of liquid or slurrified solid waste such as drill cuttings [Moschovidis et al, 1998;Schmidt et al, 1999;Keck, 2002;Clark et al, 2005;Guo et al, 2007;Tsang et al, 2008]; and hydraulic fracturing and waterflooding for hydrocarbon recovery [Ayoub et al, 1992;Morales and Marcinew, 1993;Economides and Nolte, 2000;Hustedt et al, 2008;Khodaverdian et al, 2010]. Although the engineering objectives vary in this list of applications, they share a common operation procedure in that clean fluid and/or slurry is injected into the subsurface via a circular wellbore over a certain interval.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupled discrete element modeling of fluid injection into dense granular media

2013

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[1] The coupled displacement process of fluid injection into a dense granular medium is investigated numerically using a discrete element method (DEM) code PFC2D r coupled with a pore network fluid flow scheme. How a dense granular medium behaves in response to fluid injection is a subject of fundamental and applied research interests to better understand subsurface processes such as fluid or gas migration and formation of intrusive features as well as engineering applications such as hydraulic fracturing and geological storage in unconsolidated formations. The numerical analysis is performed with DEM executing the mechanical calculation and the network model solving the Hagen-Poiseuille equation between the pore spaces enclosed by chains of particles and contacts. Hydromechanical coupling is realized by data exchanging at predetermined time steps. The numerical results show that increase in the injection rate and the invading fluid viscosity and decrease in the modulus and permeability of the medium result in fluid flow behaviors displaying a transition from infiltration-governed to infiltration-limited and the granular medium responses evolving from that of a rigid porous medium to localized failure leading to the development of preferential paths. The transition in the fluid flow and granular medium behaviors is governed by the ratio between the characteristic times associated with fluid injection and hydromechanical coupling. The peak pressures at large injection rates when fluid leakoff is limited compare well with those from the injection experiments in triaxial cells in the literature. The numerical analysis also reveals intriguing tip kinematics field for the growth of a fluid channel, which may shed light on the occurrence of the apical inverted-conical features in sandstone and magma intrusion in unconsolidated formations.Citation: Zhang, F., B. Damjanac, and H. Huang (2013), Coupled discrete element modeling of fluid injection into dense granular media,

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupled discrete element modeling of fluid injection into dense granular media

2013

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“…Fluid injection into the subsurface occurs in many engineering applications such as CO 2 geological storage [1,2], grouting for ground improvement [3,4], enhanced oil recovery [5], waste subsurface disposal [6,7], and water-flooding for hydrocarbon recovery and hydraulic fracturing [8][9][10][11][12]. Fractures are a common consequence of subsurface fluid injection.…”

Section: Introduction 31 32mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fluid-driven fractures in granular media: Insights from numerical investigations

Sun

Espinoza

et al. 2020

Phys. Rev. E

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We investigate the mechanisms of opening-mode fracture initiation in granular media. The study 11 is based on simulation of grain-scale fluid-grain interactions through a coupled numerical approach in which the discrete element model (DEM) is used to solve for the mechanics of a solid granular medium and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to model fluid flow and drag forces. We present benchmark problems with analytical solutions and validate this numerical model against experiments of viscous-drag driven cavity in the literature. Additional simulation results show fracture initiation mechanisms in a random granular packing subjected to constant boundary stresses and to fluid injection with a localized source. The dimensionless variable F s /F sk (ratio of seepage force F s and skeletal force F sk ) incorporates the impacts of 19 physical properties and injection parameters including fluid viscosity, injection velocity, grain 20 size and effective stresses, and has been used as a criterion separating regimes of fluid invasion 21 and drag-driven fracture opening. Our simulation results show that F s /F sk in combination with τ 1 (ratio of diffusion time from hydromechanical coupling and injection time) serve as a prediction of fracture opening within granular packing. We suggest a simple criterion (F s /F sk > 1 or τ 1 > 0.17) that is valid for various types of granular media and injection conditions to determine if fracture opening will occur. Among other applications, this study is useful to predict the initiation and propagation of fractures in natural sediments.

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