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Assessment of Hydraulic Fracture Initiation Pressure Using Fracture Mechanics Criterion and Coupled Criterion with Emphasis on the Size Effect

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Abstract

Hydraulic fracturing is a technique to stimulate oil reservoirs and is a method to estimate in situ stresses. The initiation pressure in hydraulic fracturing, sometimes called the breakdown pressure, is a key parameter used directly in the estimation of in situ stresses. The main weakness of the classical criteria presented for initiation pressure, which are based on the tensile strength of materials, is that they do not include size effects. In this article, using a plane strain numerical model for the fracture mechanics criterion and the coupled criterion, the fracture initiation pressure is obtained and the results are compared with classical models. The results show that when the initial crack length is very small compared to the wellbore radius, then Haimson and Fairhurst’s criterion becomes equivalent to the fracture mechanics criterion. By increasing the ratio of initial crack length to the borehole radius, the fracture initiation pressure obtained from Haimson and Fairhurst’s criterion will have an error. On the other hand, the fracture pressure obtained from the coupled criterion shows a great dependence on the borehole size. If the length scale of the material is much larger than the borehole radius, the fracture mechanics controls the failure mechanism and if the borehole radius is much larger than the Irwin material length scale, then the failure is driven by tensile strength. The assessment made in this article is very important in the field, when the maximum in situ stress is supposed to be estimated based on the hydraulic fracture initiation pressure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

    Ali Lakirouhani & Somaie Jolfaei

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  1. Ali Lakirouhani
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Correspondence to Ali Lakirouhani.

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Lakirouhani, A., Jolfaei, S. Assessment of Hydraulic Fracture Initiation Pressure Using Fracture Mechanics Criterion and Coupled Criterion with Emphasis on the Size Effect. Arab J Sci Eng 49, 5897–5908 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-023-08554-6

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