fault zones and fault-related fracture systems control the mechanical behaviors and fluid-flow properties of the earth’s crust. furthermore, nowadays, modeling is being increasingly used in order to understand the behavior of rock masses, and to determine their characteristics. in this work, fault zones and fracture patterns are reviewed, and also comprehensive studies are carried out on the fr...

Fault zones and fault-related fracture systems control the mechanical behaviors and fluid-flow properties of the Earth’s crust. Furthermore, nowadays, modeling is being increasingly used in order to understand the behavior of rock masses, and to determine their characteristics. In this work, fault zones and fracture patterns are reviewed, and also comprehensive studies are carried out on the fr...

Various structural discontinuities, which form a discrete fracture network, play a significant role in the failure conditions and stability of the rock masses around underground excavations. Several continuum numerical methods have been used to study the stability of underground excavations in jointed rock masses but only few of them can take into account the influence of the pre-existing natur...

Fluid flow in jointed rock mass with impermeable matrix is often controlled by joint properties, including aperture, orientation, spacing, persistence and etc. On the other hand, since the rock mass is made of heterogeneous and anisotropic natural materials, geometric properties of joints may have dispersed values. One of the most powerful methods for simulation of stochastic nature of geometri...

The explosion process of explosives in a borehole applies a very high pressure on its surrounding rock media. This process can initiate and propagate rock fractures, and finally, may result in the rock fragmentation. Rock fragmentation is mainly caused by the propagation of inherent pre-existing fractures of the rock mass and also from the extension of the newly formed cracks within the intact ...

This paper presents a modeling approach for three-dimensional simulation of hydraulic fracturing of jointed rock. Dynardo developed a 3D-hydraulic fracturing simulator and coupled the simulator with leading edge calibration and optimization algorithms to offers the software base to optimize gas production with computer simulation. With the integrated approach, an effective 3D numerical reservoi...

[1] In order to improve discrete fracture network (DFN) models, which are increasingly required into groundwater and rock mechanics applications, we propose a new DFN modeling based on the evolution of fracture network formation—nucleation, growth, and arrest—with simplified mechanical rules. The central idea of the model relies on the mechanical role played by large fractures in stopping the g...

This paper presents a modeling approach for three-dimensional simulation of hydraulic fracturing of jointed rock. The base for a successful computer based simulation for productive use is the ability to calculate the fractured volume with sufficient accuracy and efficiency. Especially in cases three dimensional effects have to be taken into account, the common commercial software tools in oil a...

A new modeling approach is presented to improve numerical simulations of groundwater flow and contaminant transport in fractured geological media. The approach couples geological and numerical models through an intermediate mesh generation phase. As a first step, a platform for 3D geological modeling is used to represent fractures as 2D surfaces with arbitrary shape and orientation in 3D space....

1. Abstract Modeling flow and transport in a fractured rock formation requires in many instances an explicit representation of fractures. In such cases discrete fracture models do not always work properly because of the difficulty to be calibrated and the lack of flexibility to be adapted, in an automated calibration process, when the description of fracture locations is not accurate enough. In...