Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering |
| Early online date | 1 Mar 2024 |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 1 Mar 2024 |
Abstract
Acid fracturing is a technique to enhance productivity in carbonate formations. In this work, a thermal–hydraulic–mechanical–chemical (THMC) coupling model for acid fracture propagation is proposed based on a phase-field approach. The phase-field variable is utilized as an indicator function to distinguish the fracture and the reservoir, and to track the propagation of the fracture. The resulting system is a nonstationary, nonlinear, variational inequality system in which five different physical modules for the displacement, the phase-field, the pressure, the temperature, and the acid concentration are coupled. This multi-physical system includes numerical challenges in terms of nonlinearities, solution coupling algorithms, and computational cost. To this end, high fidelity physics-based discretizations, parallel solvers, and mesh adaptivity techniques are required. The model solves the phase-field and the displacement variables by a quasi-monolithic scheme and the other variables by a partitioned schemes, where the resulting overall algorithm is of iterative coupling type. In order to maintain the computational cost low, the adaptive mesh refinement technique in terms of a predictor-corrector method is employed. The error indicators are obtained from both the phase-field and concentration approximations. The proposed model and the computational robustness were investigated by studying fourteen cases as well as some mesh refinement studies. It is observed that the acid and thermal effect increase the fracture volume and fracture width. Moreover, the natural fractures and holes affect the acid fracture propagation direction.
Keywords
- Acid fracture propagation, Adaptive finite elements, Multiphysics, Phase-field method, Predictor–corrector mesh refinement
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Engineering(all)
- Civil and Structural Engineering
- Earth and Planetary Sciences(all)
- Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology
- Earth and Planetary Sciences(all)
- Geology
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In: Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, 01.03.2024.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - A Thermal–Hydraulic–Mechanical–Chemical Coupling Model for Acid Fracture Propagation Based on a Phase-Field Method
AU - Dai, Yifan
AU - Hou, Bing
AU - Lee, Sanghyun
AU - Wick, Thomas
N1 - Funding Information: The authors are grateful to The National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant (NO. 2022YFE0129800) and The National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52074311 and No.U19B6003-05). The first author is supported by a CSC scholarship. Moreover, the first author gratefully acknowledges the hospitality and computing resources at the Institute of Applied Mathematics during his CSC research stay. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2024.
PY - 2024/3/1
Y1 - 2024/3/1
N2 - Acid fracturing is a technique to enhance productivity in carbonate formations. In this work, a thermal–hydraulic–mechanical–chemical (THMC) coupling model for acid fracture propagation is proposed based on a phase-field approach. The phase-field variable is utilized as an indicator function to distinguish the fracture and the reservoir, and to track the propagation of the fracture. The resulting system is a nonstationary, nonlinear, variational inequality system in which five different physical modules for the displacement, the phase-field, the pressure, the temperature, and the acid concentration are coupled. This multi-physical system includes numerical challenges in terms of nonlinearities, solution coupling algorithms, and computational cost. To this end, high fidelity physics-based discretizations, parallel solvers, and mesh adaptivity techniques are required. The model solves the phase-field and the displacement variables by a quasi-monolithic scheme and the other variables by a partitioned schemes, where the resulting overall algorithm is of iterative coupling type. In order to maintain the computational cost low, the adaptive mesh refinement technique in terms of a predictor-corrector method is employed. The error indicators are obtained from both the phase-field and concentration approximations. The proposed model and the computational robustness were investigated by studying fourteen cases as well as some mesh refinement studies. It is observed that the acid and thermal effect increase the fracture volume and fracture width. Moreover, the natural fractures and holes affect the acid fracture propagation direction.
AB - Acid fracturing is a technique to enhance productivity in carbonate formations. In this work, a thermal–hydraulic–mechanical–chemical (THMC) coupling model for acid fracture propagation is proposed based on a phase-field approach. The phase-field variable is utilized as an indicator function to distinguish the fracture and the reservoir, and to track the propagation of the fracture. The resulting system is a nonstationary, nonlinear, variational inequality system in which five different physical modules for the displacement, the phase-field, the pressure, the temperature, and the acid concentration are coupled. This multi-physical system includes numerical challenges in terms of nonlinearities, solution coupling algorithms, and computational cost. To this end, high fidelity physics-based discretizations, parallel solvers, and mesh adaptivity techniques are required. The model solves the phase-field and the displacement variables by a quasi-monolithic scheme and the other variables by a partitioned schemes, where the resulting overall algorithm is of iterative coupling type. In order to maintain the computational cost low, the adaptive mesh refinement technique in terms of a predictor-corrector method is employed. The error indicators are obtained from both the phase-field and concentration approximations. The proposed model and the computational robustness were investigated by studying fourteen cases as well as some mesh refinement studies. It is observed that the acid and thermal effect increase the fracture volume and fracture width. Moreover, the natural fractures and holes affect the acid fracture propagation direction.
KW - Acid fracture propagation
KW - Adaptive finite elements
KW - Multiphysics
KW - Phase-field method
KW - Predictor–corrector mesh refinement
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186468006&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00603-024-03769-x
DO - 10.1007/s00603-024-03769-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85186468006
JO - Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering
JF - Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering
SN - 0723-2632
ER -