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

Planta, Cyrill von; Vogler, Daniel; Chen, Xiaoqing; Nestola, Maria Giuseppina Chiara; Saar, Martin O.; Krause, Rolf

doi:10.1007/s10596-019-09873-0

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Although R c increases with σ ′, consistent with previous studies (B. Li et al., 2008), the measure of tortuosity given by e h / e m increases from 0.24 (5 bar σ ′) to 0.28 (9.2 bar σ ′), with lower values indicating higher tortuosity (Ishibashi et al., 2018; Matsuki et al., 2006). This suggests that overall (from 5 to 13.8 bar σ ′), increasing R c does not correspond to increasing tortuosity, however, at lower σ ′ (from 5 to 9.2 bar σ ′), tortuosity increases, supporting the notion that increased R c yields higher tortuosity (Muralidharan et al., 2004; Y. W. Tsang, 1984; von Planta et al., 2019). This could suggest that the preferential flow channels, which facilitate the majority of the flow and require higher stresses to close (Pyrak‐Nolte & Nolte, 2016; Rasmuson & Neretnieks, 1986), are not significantly impacted by this R c increase.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…This suggests that overall (from 5 to 13.8 bar σ′), increasing R c does not correspond to increasing tortuosity, however, at lower σ′ (from 5 to 9.2 bar σ′), tortuosity increases, supporting the notion that increased R c yields higher tortuosity (Muralidharan et al, 2004;Y. W. Tsang, 1984;von Planta et al, 2019). This could suggest that the preferential flow channels, which facilitate the majority of the flow and require higher stresses to close (Pyrak-Nolte & Nolte, 2016;Rasmuson & Neretnieks, 1986), are not significantly impacted by this R c increase.…”

Section: Evolving Aperture Structure and Its Effect On Flow Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 76%

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A Systematic Investigation Into the Control of Roughness on the Flow Properties of 3D‐Printed Fractures

Phillips

Bultreys

Bisdom

et al. 2021

Water Resources Research

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Evolving Aperture Structure and Its Effect On Flow Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 76%

A Systematic Investigation Into the Control of Roughness on the Flow Properties of 3D‐Printed Fractures

Phillips

Bultreys

Bisdom

et al. 2021

Water Resources Research

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“…However, the applied normal stress on the fracture was relatively low, and in the order of 1 MPa (Li et al, 2008;Konzuk & Kueper, 2004). When the fracture closes under stress, the aperture roughness and the contact areas become larger, and the flow tortuosity increases (Muralidharan et al, 2004;von Planta et al, 2019von Planta et al, , 2020. These phenomena contribute to further deviation from the permeability estimation of the Cubic law (Iwano, 1995;Lee & Cho, 2002;Sisavath et al, 2003;Vogler et al, 2016;Walsh et al, 1997).…”

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confidence: 99%

No‐Flow Fraction (NFF) Permeability Model for Rough Fractures Under Normal Stress

Javanmard

Ebigbo

Walsh

et al. 2021

Water Resources Research

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Accurate estimation of rock permeability is a major challenge in industrial projects such as oil and gas extraction, geothermal energy production, radioactive waste containment, and CO 2 geosequestration. For many of these projects, the targeted formation exhibits low matrix permeability and the main fluid conduit is the fracture network (Berkowitz, 2002; Neuman, 2005; Sahimi, 2011). To accurately evaluate the hydraulic properties of such geoformations, understanding the behavior of a single rock fracture under in situ conditions is necessary. The permeability of fluids through a single rock fracture is often estimated using the Cubic law-a simplification of the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations based on several key assumptions. These include assuming that the fracture consists of two smooth and parallel plates (Witherspoon et al., 1980). Therefore, the geometry of the flow path can be represented by a single value, the uniform spacing between the two walls. However, no rock fracture is perfectly smooth and, as a result, its aperture field is heterogeneous. A natural way to reduce the heterogeneous aperture field to a single value is to average the fracture aperture distribution. Various averaging methods have been proposed in the literature (

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“…This work presents a novel approach, where we use ideas from fictitious domain (FD) methods to capture the HM behaviour of fractures without the simplification of fracture topography or physical processes. This paper expands on previous work [49,67] by considering hydro-mechanical effects on fracture intersections, while incorporating contact mechanics and fluid flow on fracture surfaces with complex topographical patterns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

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

Cited by 14 publications

References 51 publications

A Systematic Investigation Into the Control of Roughness on the Flow Properties of 3D‐Printed Fractures

A Systematic Investigation Into the Control of Roughness on the Flow Properties of 3D‐Printed Fractures

No‐Flow Fraction (NFF) Permeability Model for Rough Fractures Under Normal Stress

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

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