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Author: Farrokh Sheibani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
Although many fracture models are based on two-dimensional plane strain approximations, accurately predicting fracture propagation geometry requires accounting for the three-dimensional aspects of fractures. In this study, we implemented 3-D displacement discontinuity (DD) boundary element modeling to investigate the following intrinsically 3-D natural or hydraulic fracture propagation problems: the effect of fracture height on lateral propagation of vertical natural fractures, joint development in the vicinity of normal faults, and hydraulic fracture height growth and non-planar propagation paths. Fracture propagation is controlled by stress intensity factor (SIF) and its determination plays a central role in LEFM. The DD modeling is used to evaluate SIF in Mode I, II and III at the tip of an arbitrarily-shaped embedded crack by using crack-tip element displacement discontinuity. We examine the accuracy of SIF calculation is for rectangular, penny-shaped, and elliptical planar cracks. Using the aforementioned model for lateral propagation of overlapping fractures shows that the curving path of overlapping fractures is strongly influenced by the spacing-to-height ratio of fractures, as well as the differential stress magnitude. We show that the angle of intersection between two non-coincident but parallel en-echelon fractures depends strongly on the fracture height-to-spacing ratio, with intersection angles being asymptotic for "tall" fractures (large height-to-spacing ratios) and nearly orthogonal for "short" fractures. Stress perturbation around normal faults is three-dimensionally heterogeneous. That perturbation can result in joint development at the vicinity of normal faults. We examine the geometrical relationship between genetically related normal faults and joints in various geologic environments by considering a published case study of fault-related joints in the Arches National Park region, Utah. The results show that joint orientation is dependent on vertical position with respect to the normal fault, the spacing-to-height ratio of sub-parallel normal faults, and Poisson's ratio of the media. Our calculations represent a more physically reasonable match to measured field data than previously published, and we also identify a new mechanism to explain the driving stress for opening mode fracture propagation upon burial of quasi-elastic rocks. Hydraulic fractures may not necessarily start perpendicular to the minimum horizontal remote stress. We use the developed fracture propagation model to explain abnormality in the geometry of fracturing from misaligned horizontal wellbores. Results show that the misalignment causes non-planar lateral propagation and restriction in fracture height and fracture width in wellbore part.
Author: Farrokh Sheibani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
Although many fracture models are based on two-dimensional plane strain approximations, accurately predicting fracture propagation geometry requires accounting for the three-dimensional aspects of fractures. In this study, we implemented 3-D displacement discontinuity (DD) boundary element modeling to investigate the following intrinsically 3-D natural or hydraulic fracture propagation problems: the effect of fracture height on lateral propagation of vertical natural fractures, joint development in the vicinity of normal faults, and hydraulic fracture height growth and non-planar propagation paths. Fracture propagation is controlled by stress intensity factor (SIF) and its determination plays a central role in LEFM. The DD modeling is used to evaluate SIF in Mode I, II and III at the tip of an arbitrarily-shaped embedded crack by using crack-tip element displacement discontinuity. We examine the accuracy of SIF calculation is for rectangular, penny-shaped, and elliptical planar cracks. Using the aforementioned model for lateral propagation of overlapping fractures shows that the curving path of overlapping fractures is strongly influenced by the spacing-to-height ratio of fractures, as well as the differential stress magnitude. We show that the angle of intersection between two non-coincident but parallel en-echelon fractures depends strongly on the fracture height-to-spacing ratio, with intersection angles being asymptotic for "tall" fractures (large height-to-spacing ratios) and nearly orthogonal for "short" fractures. Stress perturbation around normal faults is three-dimensionally heterogeneous. That perturbation can result in joint development at the vicinity of normal faults. We examine the geometrical relationship between genetically related normal faults and joints in various geologic environments by considering a published case study of fault-related joints in the Arches National Park region, Utah. The results show that joint orientation is dependent on vertical position with respect to the normal fault, the spacing-to-height ratio of sub-parallel normal faults, and Poisson's ratio of the media. Our calculations represent a more physically reasonable match to measured field data than previously published, and we also identify a new mechanism to explain the driving stress for opening mode fracture propagation upon burial of quasi-elastic rocks. Hydraulic fractures may not necessarily start perpendicular to the minimum horizontal remote stress. We use the developed fracture propagation model to explain abnormality in the geometry of fracturing from misaligned horizontal wellbores. Results show that the misalignment causes non-planar lateral propagation and restriction in fracture height and fracture width in wellbore part.
Author: Xinpu Shen
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351796291
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
The expansion of unconventional petroleum resources in the recent decade and the rapid development of computational technology have provided the opportunity to develop and apply 3D numerical modeling technology to simulate the hydraulic fracturing of shale and tight sand formations. This book presents 3D numerical modeling technologies for hydraulic fracturing developed in recent years, and introduces solutions to various 3D geomechanical problems related to hydraulic fracturing. In the solution processes of the case studies included in the book, fully coupled multi-physics modeling has been adopted, along with innovative computational techniques, such as submodeling. In practice, hydraulic fracturing is an essential project component in shale gas/oil development and tight sand oil, and provides an essential measure in the process of drilling cuttings reinjection (CRI). It is also an essential measure for widened mud weight window (MWW) when drilling through naturally fractured formations; the process of hydraulic plugging is a typical application of hydraulic fracturing. 3D modeling and numerical analysis of hydraulic fracturing is essential for the successful development of tight oil/gas formations: it provides accurate solutions for optimized stage intervals in a multistage fracking job. It also provides optimized well-spacing for the design of zipper-frac wells. Numerical estimation of casing integrity under stimulation injection in the hydraulic fracturing process is one of major concerns in the successful development of unconventional resources. This topic is also investigated numerically in this book. Numerical solutions to several other typical geomechanics problems related to hydraulic fracturing, such as fluid migration caused by fault reactivation and seismic activities, are also presented. This book can be used as a reference textbook to petroleum, geotechnical and geothermal engineers, to senior undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, and to geologists, hydrogeologists, geophysicists and applied mathematicians working in this field. This book is also a synthetic compendium of both the fundamentals and some of the most advanced aspects of hydraulic fracturing technology.
Author: Yu-Shu Wu
Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing
ISBN: 0128129999
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 568
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Book Description
Hydraulic Fracture Modeling delivers all the pertinent technology and solutions in one product to become the go-to source for petroleum and reservoir engineers. Providing tools and approaches, this multi-contributed reference presents current and upcoming developments for modeling rock fracturing including their limitations and problem-solving applications. Fractures are common in oil and gas reservoir formations, and with the ongoing increase in development of unconventional reservoirs, more petroleum engineers today need to know the latest technology surrounding hydraulic fracturing technology such as fracture rock modeling. There is tremendous research in the area but not all located in one place. Covering two types of modeling technologies, various effective fracturing approaches and model applications for fracturing, the book equips today’s petroleum engineer with an all-inclusive product to characterize and optimize today’s more complex reservoirs. Offers understanding of the details surrounding fracturing and fracture modeling technology, including theories and quantitative methods Provides academic and practical perspective from multiple contributors at the forefront of hydraulic fracturing and rock mechanics Provides today’s petroleum engineer with model validation tools backed by real-world case studies
Author: Jon Jincai Zhang
Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing
ISBN: 0128148152
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 534
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Book Description
Applied Petroleum Geomechanics provides a bridge between theory and practice as a daily use reference that contains direct industry applications. Going beyond the basic fundamentals of rock properties, this guide covers critical field and lab tests, along with interpretations from actual drilling operations and worldwide case studies, including abnormal formation pressures from many major petroleum basins. Rounding out with borehole stability solutions and the geomechanics surrounding hydraulic fracturing and unconventional reservoirs, this comprehensive resource gives petroleum engineers a much-needed guide on how to tackle today’s advanced oil and gas operations. Presents methods in formation evaluation and the most recent advancements in the area, including tools, techniques and success stories Bridges the gap between theory of rock mechanics and practical oil and gas applications Helps readers understand pore pressure calculations and predictions that are critical to shale and hydraulic activity
Author: Kaustubh Shrivastava
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
Hydraulic fracturing of horizontal wells is one of the key technological breakthroughs that has led to the shale revolution. Hydraulic fracturing models are used to engineer hydraulic fracture design and optimize production. Typically, hydraulic fracturing models treat hydraulic fractures as planar, bi-wing fractures. However, recent core-through investigations have suggested that during hydraulic fracturing in naturally fractured reservoirs, complex hydraulic fracture geometries can be created due to the interaction of the growing hydraulic fracture with natural fractures. This limits the application of planar fracture models for optimizing hydraulic fracturing design in naturally fractured reservoirs. In this research, we present a novel three-dimensional displacement discontinuity method based hydraulic fracturing simulator that allows us to model hydraulic fracture growth in the presence of natural fractures along with proppant transport in an efficient manner. The model developed in this dissertation is used to investigate the interaction of a hydraulic fracture with natural fractures and study the transport of proppant in the resulting complex fracture networks. This investigation gives us novel insight into the influence of fracture geometry and stress interference on the final distribution of proppant in fracture networks. Based on this investigation, suggestions are made to improve proppant transport in complex fracture networks. In order to correctly capture the effect of natural fractures on fracture growth, knowledge about the distribution of natural fractures in the reservoir is imperative. Typically, little is known about the in-situ natural fracture distribution, as direct observation of the reservoir is not possible. A novel technique of synthetic coring is developed to create a discrete fracture network (DFN) from core data, and it is used to create a DFN based on the Hydraulic Fracturing Test Site #1 data. Hydraulic fracture propagation is modeled in the created DFN, and the results are compared with field observations. As the reservoir may contain thousands of natural fractures, simulations in a realistic DFN can be computationally very expensive. In order to reduce the computational requirements of the simulator, we present a novel predictor step based on the local linearization method that provides a better initial guess for solving the fluid-solid interaction problem. This is shown to reduce computational time significantly. A novel technique, Extended Adaptive Integral Method, to speed up the simulator is developed. The method uses an effective medium to represent the interaction between displacement discontinuity elements and reduces the order of complexity of solving the geomechanical system of equations from O(N2) to O(NlogN). The novel formulation of this method is presented, and sensitivity studies are conducted to show the improvement in computational efficiency
Author: R. D. Barree
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Oil wells
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Author: Lei Zhou
Publisher: Cuvillier Verlag
ISBN: 3736946562
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
In this dissertation, two new numerical approaches for hydraulic fracturing in tight reservoir were developed. A more physical-based numerical 3D-model was developed for simulating the whole hydraulic fracturing process including fracture propagation, closure and contact as well as proppant transport and settling. In this approach rock formation, pore and fracture systems were assembled together, in which hydro-mechanical coupling effect, proppant transport and settling as well as their influences on fracture closure and contact were fully considered. A combined FDM and FVM schema was used to solve the problem. Three applications by using the new approach were presented. The results illustrated the whole hydraulic fracturing process well and seemed to be logical, which confirmed the ability of the developed approach to model the in-situ hydraulic fracturing operation from injection start till fully closure. In order to investigate the orientation problem of hydraulic fracturing in tight reservoir, a new approach for simulating arbitrary fracture propagation and orientation in 2D was developed. It was solved by a hybrid schema of XFEM and FVM. Three numerical studies were illustrated, which proved the ability of the developed approach to solve the orientation problem in field cases.
Author: Endrina Rivas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Hydraulic fracturing is a stimulation technique in which fluid is injected at high pressure into low-permeability reservoirs to create a fracture network for enhanced production of oil and gas. It is the primary purpose of hydraulic fracturing to enhance well production. The three main mechanisms during hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas production which largely impact the reservoir production are: (1) fracture propagation during initial pad fluid injection, which defines the extent of the fracture; (2) fracture propagation during injection of proppant slurry (fluid mixed with granular material), creating a propped reservoir zone; and (3) shear dilation of natural fractures surrounding the hydraulically fractured zone, creating a broader stimulated zone. The thesis has three objectives that support the simulation of mechanisms that lead to enhanced production of a hydraulically-fractured reservoir. The first objective is to develop a numerical model for the simulation of the mechanical deformation and shear dilation of naturally fractured rock masses. In this work, a two-dimensional model for the simulation of discrete fracture networks (DFN) is developed using the extended finite element method (XFEM), in which the mesh does not conform to the natural fracture network. The model incorporates contact, cohesion, and friction between blocks of rock. Shear dilation is an important mechanism impacting the overall nonlinear response of naturally fractured rock masses and is also included in the model--physics previously not simulated within an XFEM context. Here, shear dilation is modeled through a linear dilation model, capped by a dilation limiting displacement. Highly nonlinear problems involving multiple joint sets are investigated within a quasi-static context. An explicit scheme is used in conjunction with the dynamic relaxation technique to obtain equilibrium solutions in the face of the nonlinear constitutive models from contact, cohesion, friction, and dilation. The numerical implementation is verified and its convergence illustrated using a shear test and a biaxial test. The model is then applied to the practical problem of the stability of a slope of fractured rock. The second objective is to develop a numerical model for the simulation of proppant transport through planar fractures. This work presents the numerical methodology for simulation of proppant transport through a hydraulic fracture using the finite volume method. Proppant models commonly used in the hydraulic fracturing literature solve the linearized advection equation; this work presents solution methods for the nonlinear form of the proppant flux equation. The complexities of solving the nonlinear and heterogeneous hyperbolic advection equation that governs proppant transport are tackled, particularly handling shock waves that are generated due to the nonlinear flux function and the spatially-varying width and pressure gradient along the fracture. A critical time step is derived for the proppant transport problem solved using an explicit solution strategy. Additionally, a predictor-corrector algorithm is developed to constrain the proppant from exceeding the physically admissible range. The model can capture the mechanisms of proppant bridging occurring in sections of narrow fracture width, tip screen-out occurring when fractures become saturated with proppant, and flushing of proppant into new fracture segments. The results are verified by comparison with characteristic solutions and the model is used to simulate proppant transport through a KGD fracture. The final objective is to develop a numerical model for the simulation of proppant transport through propagating non-planar fractures. This work presents the first monolithic coupled numerical model for simulating proppant transport through a propagating hydraulic fracture. A fracture is propagated through a two-dimensional domain, driven by the flow of a proppant-laden slurry. Modeling of the slurry flow includes the effects of proppant bridging and the subsequent flow of fracturing fluid through the packed proppant pack. This allows for the simulation of a tip screen-out, a phenomenon in which there is a high degree of physical interaction between the rock deformation, fluid flow, and proppant transport. Tip screen-out also leads to shock wave formation in the solution. Numerical implementation of the model is verified and the model is then used to simulate a tip screen-out in both planar and non-planar fractures. An analysis of the fracture aperture, fluid pressure, and proppant concentration profiles throughout the simulation is performed for three different coupling schemes: monolithic, sequential, and loose coupling. It is demonstrated that even with time step refinement, the loosely-coupled scheme fails to converge to the same results as the monolithic and sequential schemes. The monolithic and sequential algorithms yield the same solution up to the onset of a tip screen-out, after which the sequential scheme fails to converge. The monolithic scheme is shown to be more efficient than the sequential algorithm (requiring fewer iterations) and has comparable computational cost to the loose coupling algorithm. Thus, the monolithic scheme is shown to be optimal in terms of computational efficiency, robustness, and accuracy. In addition to this finding, a robust and more efficient algorithm for injection-rate controlled hydraulic fracturing simulation based on global mass conservation is presented in the thesis.
Author: Farrokh Sheibani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Stress intensity factor determination plays a central role in linearly elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) problems. Fracture propagation is controlled by the stress field near the crack tip. Because this stress field is asymptotic dominant or singular, it is characterized by the stress intensity factor (SIF). Since many rock types show brittle elastic behaviour under hydrocarbon reservoir conditions, LEFM can be satisfactorily used for studying hydraulic fracture development. The purpose of this paper is to describe a numerical method to evaluate the stress intensity factor in Mode I, II and III at the tip of an arbitrarily-shaped, embedded cracks. The stress intensity factor is evaluated directly based on displacement discontinuities (DD) using a three-dimensional displacement discontinuity, boundary element method based on the equations of proposed in [1]. The boundary element formulation incorporates the fundamental closed-form analytical solution to a rectangular discontinuity in a homogenous, isotropic and linearly elastic half space. The accuracy of the stress intensity factor calculation is satisfactorily examined for rectangular, penny-shaped and elliptical planar cracks. Accurate and fast evaluation of the stress intensity factor for planar cracks shows the proposed procedure is robust for SIF calculation and crack propagation purposes. The empirical constant proposed by [2] relating crack tip element displacement discontinuity and SIF values provides surprisingly accurate results for planar cracks with limited numbers of constant DD elements. Using the described numerical model, we study how fracturing from misaligned horizontal wellbores might results in non-uniform height growth of the hydraulic fracture by evaluating of SIF distribution along the upper front of the fracture.
Author: Jiacheng Wang (Ph. D.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Hydraulic fracturing brings economic unconventional reservoir developments, and multi-cluster completion designs result in complex hydraulic fracture geometries. Therefore, accurate yet efficient modeling of the propagation of multiple non-planar hydraulic fractures is desired to study the mechanisms of hydraulic fracture propagation and optimize field completion designs. In this research, a novel hydraulic fracture model is developed to simulate the propagation of multiple hydraulic fractures with proppant transport in layered and naturally fractured reservoirs. The simplified three-dimensional displacement discontinuity method (S3D DDM) is enhanced to compute the hydraulic fracture deformation and propagation with analytical fracture height growth and vertical width variation. Using a single row of DDM elements, the enhanced S3D DDM hydraulic fracture model computes the fully 3D geometries with a similar computational intensity to a 2D model. Then an Eulerian-Lagrangian proppant transport model is developed, where the slurry flow rate and pressure are solved within the Eulerian regime, and the movement of solid proppant particles is solved within the Lagrangian regime. The adaptive proppant gridding scheme in the model allows a smaller grid size at the earlier fracturing stage for higher resolution and a larger grid size at the later fracturing stage for higher efficiency. Besides the physical model, an optimization module that utilizes advanced optimization algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA) and pattern search algorithm (PSA) is proposed to automatically optimize the completion designs according to the preset targets. Numerical results show that hydraulic fracture propagation is under the combined influence of the in-situ stress, pumping schedule, natural fractures, and cluster placement. Hence, numerical simulation is needed to predict complex hydraulic fracture geometries under various geologic and completion settings. The complex hydraulic fracture geometries, together with fracturing fluid and proppant properties, also affect proppant placement. Moreover, the stress contrast at layer interfaces can cause proppant bridging and form barriers on the proppant transport path. The optimized completion designs increase effective hydraulic and propped areas, but they vary depending on the optimization targets. The developed hydraulic fracture model provides insights into the hydraulic fracturing process and benefits unconventional reservoir development
