Fluid-driven fracture growth, called hydraulic fracturing, refers to the process where a pressurized fluid flows into and propagates fractures in the rocks. It is a commonly used technique for well stimulation to extract oil and gas in the petroleum industry and geothermal resources from deep granite and is also widely used in the mining industry to precondition rock for extraction by caving and to reduce seismic risk in deep high stress mines. In addition, fluid-driven fractures are important in several geological processes, for example, associated with the formation of veins and joints and in growth of dikes leading to volcanic eruption. The mechanics of hydraulic fractures involves multiple physical processes including the flow of viscous fluids in fractures, diffusion of fluid into porous matrix material, creation of new fracture surfaces, proppant transport and multiphase flow, and friction slip on natural fractures and faults. In particular, hydraulic fracturing is further complicated by its interaction with geological structures, the tectonic stresses, pore pressure, and rock temperature. Hydraulic fracturing typically occurs as a quasi-static process, but potentially induces seismic events if pore pressure and stress changes are not well controlled and monitored.
Mechanics of Hydraulic Fracturing: Experiment, Model, and Monitoring provides a summary of the continuing research in mechanics of hydraulic fractures for more than two decades along with new research trends, which are of interest to both researchers and industrial operators. At the science level, fracture growth in rocks occurs at a large range of scales. The rock itself as a natural material is heterogenous, consisting of minerals grains including clays, and grain sand cementing minerals. The rock mass is also structurally heterogeneous, containing microcracks, bedding planes, joints and faults. The rock material and structural heterogeneity makes the prediction of fracture growth difficult and careful experimental design and model development are required to advance our understanding. A collection of recent work thus can provide an important summary of current understanding of the multi-scale mechanics of hydraulic fractures.
Volume highlights include:
- Covers the contributions from theory, modeling and experiment including the applications of models to reservoir stimulation, mining preconditioning and the formation of geological structures
- Formation of fracture networks, the primary focus of many early models, plays a secondary role compared to the fracture growth of individual foundations and applications of the process
- Prediction of fracture shapes, sizes, and distributions in sedimentary basins and its importance in petroleum industry
- Predictive models consist of mechanics of this coupling process with results verified by testing against laboratory and field measurements
- Developing a better predicative model, many experimental studies have recently been performed to verify the comprehensive models
- Real-time monitoring methods such as micro-seismicity and trace tracking are widely adopted in petroleum industry to provide the measured fracture shapes for benchmarking the models
- Outcrop mapping provides useful data to which the model predictions can be compared
- Comparisons prove useful in uncovering geometries of fractures like dikes and veins and in studying the process of their formation
Xi Zhang, Professor, Faculty of Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China.
Bisheng Wu, Associate Professor, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, China.
Diansen Yang, Research Professor, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Andrew Bunger, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, USA.
i Preface
ii Acknowledgements
iii Dedication to Dr. Rob Jeffrey’s 70 anniversary for his pioneer contribution to the study of hydraulic fracture growth in naturally fractured rocks
Dr. Rob Jeffrey, Now Principal Geotechnical Engineer at SCT Operations, and formerly Program Leader of Petroleum Engineering at CSIRO, Australia
Chapter 1 Hydraulic fracturing in rocks: Recent progress for petroleum, mining, geothermal and geo-engineering applications
Dr. Rob Jeffrey and Prof. Emmanuel Detournay or contributor tbd
Part I: Experimental and monitoring observations
Chapter 2 The effects of stress contrasts on fracture height growth and volcanic eruption
Prof. Andrew Bunger, University of Pittsburgh, US; Agreed
Chapter 3 Anisotropy of rock properties and fracture growth in shales
Prof. Brice Lecampion, EPFL, Swiss; Agreed
Chapter 4 Monitoring of fracture growth by tiltmeter measurements
Dr. Zuorong Chen, CSIRO Energy and Dr. Rob Jeffrey, SCT; Agreed
Chapter 5 Fracture initiation by cyclic pumping
Prof. Guangqing Zhang, China University of Petroleum at Beijing, China; Agreed
Chapter 6 High-angle wells and hydraulic fractures
Drs. Diansen Yang and Zaile Zhou, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; Agreed
Chapter 7 Injection-induced micro-seismicity: field-scale monitoring
Contributor TBD
Part II: Theoretical and numerical results
Chapter 8 Tip asymptotes and applications in numerical algorithm
Prof. Emmanuel Detournay, University of Minnesota, USA; Agreed
Chapter 9 Non-singular tip and hydraulic fracture propagation
Prof. Dmitry Garagash, Dalhousie University, Canada;
Chapter 10 Modeling hydraulic fracture networks usin discrete element methods
Prof. Fengshou Zhang, Tongji University, China; Agreed
Chapter 11 Boundary element analysis of closely spaced fracture growth
Dr. Xiyu Chen, Profs Jinzhou Zhao and Yongming Li, Southwest University of Petroleum, China and Dr. Xi Zhang, CSIRO Energy, Australia; Agreed
Chapter 12 Geothermal energy output from multiple wells: thermal effects on fracture growth
Prof. Bisheng Wu, Tsinghua University, China, Agreed
Part III: Applications and engineering approaches
Chapter 13 Proppant transport in hydraulic fracture and tip screen-out
Dr. Egor Dontsov, W.D. Von Gonten Laboratories, LLC, US and Prof. Anthony Peirce, The University of British Columbia, Canada; Agreed
Chapter 14 Use of hydraulic fractures to mitigate seismicity during mining
Drs. Jianping Yang and Weizhong Chen, Chinese Academy of sciences, Dr. Xi Zhang, CSIRO Energy, Australia and Dr. Rob Jeffrey, SCT; Agreed
Chapter 15 Wellbore strengthening analysis based on hydraulic fracture mechanics
Drs. Liu Yang, Tianshou Ma, and Prof. Ping Chen Southwest University of Petroleum, China, and Bailin Wu, CSIRO Energy, Australia, Agreed
Chapter 16 Fracture characterization based on fluid flowback analysis
Prof. George Stewart at Heriot-Watt University, UK. Contributor TBD
Chapter 17 Fluid-driven fracture growth and magma intrusion
Prof. A Gudmundsson, Royal Holloway University of London, UK. Contributor TBD
Chapter 18 Hydraulic fracturing for long-term permeability enhancement: groundwater remediation and CO2 sequestration
Contributor TBD
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