Fully coupled hydraulic fracture simulation using the improved element partition method |
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| Authors: | Shujun Peng Zhennan Zhang Jianye Mou Bing Zhao Zhiyuan Liu Jiading Wang |
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| Affiliation: | 1. School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China;2. State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, China;3. SINOPEC Northwest Branch, Urumqi, China;4. State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Xi'an, China |
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| Abstract: | The improved element partition method (IEPM) is a newly developed fracture simulation approach. IEPM allows a fracture to run across an element without introducing extra degrees of freedom. It can also simulate any number of fractures in a prescribed mesh without remeshing. In this study, the IEPM is extended to hydraulic fracture simulation. First, the seepage and volumetric storage matrix of a cracked element are derived using virtual nodes (the intersection points of a crack with element edges). Subsequently, the fully coupled hydromechanical equation is derived for this cracked element. To eliminate the extra degrees of freedom (virtual nodal quantities), the water pressure and displacement of the virtual nodes are associated with their adjacent nodes through least squares interpolation. Finally, the fully coupled equation in terms of nodal quantities is obtained. The verification cases validate the method. By using this method, the field-scale hydraulic fracturing process is well simulated. The proposed approach is simple and efficient for field-scale hydraulic fracture simulation. |
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| Keywords: | element partition method field scale fully coupled model hydraulic fracture numerical simulation virtual node |
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