Experimental and numerical simulation of hydraulic fracturing

Abstract

Hydraulic Fracturing (HF) has many applications in different fields such as stimulation of oil and gas reservoirs, in situ stress measurements, stress relief for tunneling projects as well as in underground mining applications such as block caving mining. In the HF process, high pressure fluid is injected into a well to generate fractures in tight rock formations. This technique is particularly suitable for developing hydrocarbon energy resources in tight rock formations such as shale with very low permeability. An experimental setup was designed and developed to simulate the HF process in the laboratory. Cubic plaster specimens were molded and HF experiments were conducted with simulated plaster models. Five laboratory tests were performed on cubic specimens under different stress conditions. Because the uniaxial compressive strength of the plaster was about 1600 psi, in all experiments the applied vertical stress was 1000 psi to avoid breaking the specimens before injection of fluid. The differential horizontal stress varied from 100 to 500 psi. These stress levels are related to shallow formations in a real environment. It was observed that increasing the differential horizontal stress by 100 psi, the minimum pressure required to initiate HF decreases about 100 psi. These results were in agreement by 2D failure criterion of HF. All in all, the small scale HF experiments were conducted successfully in the rock mechanics lab. It was observed that vertical hydraulic fractures would propagate along maximum horizontal stress, which is in agreement with propagation of HF theory. Three-dimensional (3D) numerical models were developed and computer simulations were conducted with ABAQUS, a commercially available finite element analysis (FEA) software. The numerical simulation results compared favorably with those from the laboratory experiments, and verification and analysis were carried out. Since the results obtained from the numerical model were in agreement with the results of experiments and verified the correctness of the model, further investigation was carried out with developed computer models. Several scenarios with different vertical stresses and different levels of horizontal stress were simulated. A statistical software, R, was used to generate a 3D failure criterion for the HF in shallow formations.... It can be stated that in shallow formations, vertical stress has the least effect among stress components on the minimum pressure required to initiate HF.