The Impact of Heterogeneity on the Anisotropic Strength of an Outcrop Shale

Properly accounting for the mechanical anisotropy of shales can be critical for successful drilling of high inclination wells, because shales are known to be weak along bedding planes. To optimize the drilling parameters in such cases, a sufficiently representative, anisotropic rock mechanical model is therefore required. This paper presents such a model developed to better match results from a dedicated, extensive set of uniaxial and triaxial compression tests performed on plugs of Mancos outcrop shale with different orientations relative to the bedding plane. Post failure inspection of the plugs shows that the failure planes are to some extent affected by the orientation of the applied stress relative to the bedding planes, indicating that the bedding planes may represent weak planes which tend to fail before intrinsic failure occurs, whenever the orientation of these planes is suitable. The simple “plane of weakness” model is commonly used to predict strength as function of orientation for such a rock. A comparison of this model to the experimental data shows, however, that the weak planes seem to have an impact on strength even outside the range of orientations where the model predicts such impact. An extension of this model allowing the weak planes to be heterogeneous in terms of patchy weakness was therefore developed. In this model, local shear sliding may occur prior to macroscopic failure, leading to enhanced local stresses and corresponding reduction in strength. The model is found to give better match with strength data at intermediate orientations. The model is also able to partly predict the qualitatively different variation of Young’s modulus with orientation for this data set.