Oscillatory seismic signals arising from resonant vibrations of hydraulic fractures are observed in many geologic systems, including volcanoes, glaciers and ice sheets, and hydrocarbon and geothermal reservoirs. To better quantify the physical dimensions of fluid-filled cracks and properties of the fluids within them, we study wave motion along a thin hydraulic fracture waveguide. We present a ...

ABSTRACT Modeling of fluid flow and solute transport through fractured rock is an important component of engineering analysis in many disciplines including groundwater contamination, nuclear waste disposal, petroleum and gas production, mine excavation and geothermal production. Several studies have been conducted on single rock fracture using parallel plate model. An attempt has been made to s...

The models of stress corrosion and pressure solution established by Yasuhara et al. were introduced into the 2D FEM code of thermo-hydro-mechanical-migratory coupling analysis for dualporosity medium developed by the authors. Aiming at a hypothetical model for geological disposal of nuclear waste in an unsaturated rock mass fromwhich there is a nuclide leak, two computation conditions were desi...

The inversion of pressure transient tests by cluster variable aperture (CVA) simulated annealing is used as an inversion technique for developing models of fluid flow in fractured formations. A three-dimensional (3D) fracture network system is represented as a filled regular lattice of fracture elements. The algorithm iteratively changes element apertures for a cluster of fracture elements, whi...

In this paper, the hydraulic and heat-transfer properties of two sets of artificially fractured granite samples are investigated. First, the morphological information is determined using 3D modelling technology. The area ratio is used to describe the roughness of the fracture surface. Second, the hydraulic properties of fractured granite are tested by exposing samples to different confining pre...

In this paper we seek to relate the influence of the geometry and distribution of fracture aperture to the fluid flow properties of the fracture. Coupling fluid flow and transport experiments to high-resolution laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) enables tracking of local fluid velocity and particle trajectories, and allows direct quantification of variations caused by surface roughness. ...

We present a sequence of purely advective transport models that demonstrate the influence of small-scale geometric inhomogeneities on contaminant transport in fractured crystalline rock. Special weight is placed on the role of statistically generated variable fracture apertures. The fracture network geometry and the aperture distribution are based on information from an in situ radionuclide ret...

The influence of the multiscale fracture roughness on the heat exchange when a cold fluid enters a fractured hot solid is studied numerically on the basis of the Stokes equation and in the limit of both hydrolubrication and thermolubrication. The geometrical complexity of the fracture aperture is modeled by small self-affine perturbations added to a uniform aperture field. Thermal and hydraulic...

[1] We explore the permeability evolution of fractures in carbonate rock that results from the effects of mechanical stress and nonequilibrium chemistry (pH of fluid). Core plugs of Capitan limestone are saw cut to form a smooth axial fracture that is subsequently roughened to simulate a natural fracture with controlled surface topography. Aqueous solutions of ammonium chloride (pH 5 7) transit...

We demonstrate that the first arrival time in dispersive processes in self-affine fractures are governed by the same length scale characterizing the fractures as that which controls their permeability. In one-dimensional channel flow this length scale is the aperture of the bottle neck, i.e., the region having the smallest aperture. In two dimensions, the concept of a bottle neck is generalized...