Pressurized-fracture propagation using a phase-field approach coupled to a reservoir simulator

verfasst von

Thomas Wick, Gurpreet Singh, Mary F. Wheeler

Abstract

Tight gas and shale oil play an important role in energy security and meeting an increasing energy demand. Hydrualic fracturing is a widely used technology for recovering these resources. Prediction of fracture growth during slick-water injection and final geometry for single and muti-stage hydraulic allows quantitative assessment of frac-job scenarios. A recently introduced phase-field approach for pressurized fractures in a porous medium offers various attractive computational features for numerical simulations of cracks such as joining, branching, and non-planar propagation for heterogeneous porous media. In this study, we employ the phase-field fracture propagation model is used as a pre-processor in order to couple it to a fractured poroelastic reservoir simulator. This offers the possibility to simulate the entire scenario from hydraulic fracturing to the production process. The proposed algorithm is based on a one-way coupling and is therefore easy to adapt to existing legacy reservoir simulators. The phase-field model can be seen as a fracture-well-model in the reservoir simulator. The key idea behind this strategy is the possibility to couple reservoir and fracture flow in the phase-field formulation from which we obtain an initial condition for the reservoir simulator. Our proposed framework is substantiated with several numerical tests in two- and three dimensions.

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Texas at Austin

Typ

Aufsatz in Konferenzband

Seiten

242-252

Anzahl der Seiten

11

Publikationsdatum

2014

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 7 – Erschwingliche und saubere Energie

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.2118/168597-ms (Zugang: Unbekannt)