Hydro-mechanical behavior of fractures: 2D, F.E.M. modeling

A numerical approach for modeling the coupled hydro-mechanical fracture behavior is proposed. The movement of fluids through rock fractures and consequently the evolution of their hydraulic conductivity is an important subject in many petroleum related activities, mainly concerning the change of well productivity during the reservoir life. It is well known that the flow in the fractures is strongly controlled by the fracture apertures. Recent investigations on the distribution of the apertures in natural fractures suggest that the cubic law can, better than the Darcy law, predict the fluid flux through rough walled fractures as long as the appropriate average fracture aperture is used. A finite element code is developed to predict the influence that the stresses variation in the fracture has on the distributed hydraulic conductivity field. The proposed model combines the stochastic cubic law with a non-linear deformation function (hyperbolic) that is suggested to describe the stress-closure/opening curves of the joints and that allows to couple together the hydraulic and the mechanic fracture behavior. The relationships used and the validity of the present model are tested by means of the comparison between experimental data and numerical predictions (Bart 2000) in various bound-ary and loading conditions. Comparisons between the proposed new model and a no coupled one have also been performed. They show that the proposed coupled model allows for a more realistic description of the fracture behavior.