Science of hydraulic fracturing contains materials questions

Modellization of Hydraulic Fracturing of Porous Materials

We review microstructural fracture growth models suitable for the study of hydraulic fracture processes in disordered porous materials and present some basic results. It is shown that microstructural models exhibit certain similarities to corresponding theories of continua. These similarities are most easily demonstrated for simple crack geometries, i.e., straight cracks (finite size scalings)....

Hydraulic and Pneumatic Fracturing

Energy Analysis of Hydraulic Fracturing

In this paper, numerical simulations of circular boreholes under internal hydraulic pressure are carried out to investigate the energy transferred to the surrounding rock and the breakdown pressure. The simulations are conducted by using a micromechanical continuum damage model proposed by Golshani et al. (2006). The simulation results suggest that the borehole breakdown pressure and the energy...

Differentiating Applications of Hydraulic Fracturing

Hydraulic fracturing has received abundant media attention in recent years due to a rapid increase in the use of the technique in combination with horizontal drilling technology to produce oil and gas resources from tight reservoirs. Hydraulic fracturing techniques are also used in a variety of other applications that are unrelated to oil and gas production, includ‐ ing tunnel and dam construct...

Complex Fluids and Hydraulic Fracturing.

Nearly 70 years old, hydraulic fracturing is a core technique for stimulating hydrocarbon production in a majority of oil and gas reservoirs. Complex fluids are implemented in nearly every step of the fracturing process, most significantly to generate and sustain fractures and transport and distribute proppant particles during and following fluid injection. An extremely wide range of complex fl...