Abstract
To investigate the effect of a high confining pressure on nonlinear flow behavior in the form of an excessive flow rate and hydraulic aperture deformation in a normal deformation constitutive model, a single cut shale fracture and hydraulic fracturing shale fractures were prepared for fracture seepage testing under high confining pressures ranging from 10 to 28 MPa with a 2-MPa confining pressure gradient. Based on the seepage pressure gradient (P) and flow rate (Q) results of the experiments, piecewise regression and polynomial regression were used to fit the test data. Based on the correlation coefficients (R2), piecewise regression more widely fit the test data well under high confining pressures. Moreover, the fracture dilation flow behavior in the fractures, which was regarded as a linear flow regime, suddenly changed to another linear flow regime with a higher permeability under a high confining pressure, which differs from the traditional view. The fracture dilation flow behavior can be predicted using the dilation pressure gradient (Pd) under different confining pressures. Constitutive models of the normal deformation of the hydraulic aperture under different high confining pressures were constructed. The proposed model was validated using the Goodman hyperbolic model of fractures and will be helpful in understanding the flow behavior in the form of an excessive flow rate under high confining pressures.
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The data that support the findings presented in this paper are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41831289, 41772250, and 41877191). The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.
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Ma, H., Wang, J., Feng, P. et al. Effect of high confining pressure on flow behavior and hydraulic aperture considering fractured rock deformation. Geomech. Geophys. Geo-energ. Geo-resour. 8, 155 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40948-022-00471-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40948-022-00471-6