Simulating Hydraulic Fracturing: Failure in Soft Versus Hard Rocks

Simulating Fully 3D Hydraulic Fracturing

1.0 Introduction Hydraulic fracturing, the process of initiation and propagation of a crack by pumping fluid at relatively high flow rates and pressures, is one of several techniques for creating cracks in rock. Fractures in the earth's crust are desired for a variety of reasons, including enhanced oil and gas recovery, re-injection of drilling or other environmentally sensitive wastes, measure...

A continuum damage failure model for hydraulic fracturing of porous rocks

A continuum damage mechanics (CDM) based constitutive model has been developed to describe elastic, plastic and damage behavior of porous rocks. The pressure sensitive inelastic deformation of porous rocks together with their damage mechanisms are studied for drained and undrained conditions. Fracture mechanics of microcrack andmicro-void nucleation and their coalescence are incorporated into t...

Numerical modeling of hydraulic fracturing in carbonate rocks of Bangestan reservoir

Hydraulic fracturing is used in the oil industry in order to increase the index of production and processing in the wells whose efficiencies have been dropped due to a long-term harvest or the rocks around the wells are of low permeability. Since the hydraulic fracturing operation is costly, it is of special importance to the project managers to determine the pressure required for hydraulic fra...

Hydraulic and Pneumatic Fracturing

The Behaviour of Fracture Growth in Sedimentary Rocks: A Numerical Study Based on Hydraulic Fracturing Processes

To capture the hydraulic fractures in heterogeneous and layered rocks, a numerical code that can consider the coupled effects of fluid flow, damage, and stress field in rocks is presented. Based on the characteristics of a typical thin and inter-bedded sedimentary reservoir, China, a series of simulations on the hydraulic fracturing are performed. In the simulations, three points, i.e., (1) con...