Reservoir simulators remain essential tools for improved reservoir management in order to optimize hydraulic fracturing design in unconventional low permeability reservoirs. However, the commonly-used simulator requires too much computational efforts for the description of local phenomena in the vicinity of the hydraulic fractures, and is practically infeasible for field applications, due to la...

In this paper the Discrete Element Model (DEM) ‘ESyS_Particle’, previously used to model fracture of brittle rocks and earthquake processes, is further developed to be able to be applied to the hydraulic fracturing process in Engineered Geothermal Systems (EGS). The advantage of DEM is that large deformations and dynamic process can be modelled easily. ESyS_Particle has been used to successfull...

A series of experiments were performed to determine rock mechanical parameters related to was studied. Experimental results show that the coal seam in the study areas has a relatively low elastic modulus, high Poisson’s ratio, high fragility and is easily broken and compressed. The coal seam is considered as a transversely isotropic medium, since the physical properties in the direction of bedd...

This chapter reviews the recent progress toward computer simulation of the growth of vast systems of branched hydraulic cracks needed for the efficient extraction of gas or oil from shale strata. It is emphasized that, to achieve significant gas extraction, the spacing of parallel hydraulic cracks must be on the order of 0.1m, which means that the fracturing of the entire fracking stage would r...