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Experimental and Analytical Investigations of the Effect of Hole Size on Borehole Breakout Geometries for Estimation of In Situ Stresses

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Abstract

Borehole breakout is a natural phenomenon in boreholes drilled in rock due to the induced stress concentration. Many researchers have attempted to correlate this phenomenon with in situ stress magnitudes. In this paper, a series of true triaxial tests on sandstone blocks (120 × 120 × 120 mm3) with different diameter pre-drilled holes have been carried out. Results confirmed that breakout geometries (angular span and depth) are dependent on the relative stress magnitudes. It is also noticed that a larger hole size (hole radius) yielded a wider angular span and deeper normalised depth (breakout depth/hole size), which indicates that hole size is an important parameter for breakout geometries. In addition, the analysis on previous experimental studies suggested that the relationship between two breakout geometries is not unique and is heavily influenced by the horizontal stress magnitudes. The analysis of the existing model also revealed the angular span may be narrowed with increasing horizontal stress ratio under a certain stress–strength condition. Both analyses indicate the breakout geometries are not only dependent on each other but also on the horizontal stress magnitudes. This leads to a tentative conclusion that breakout geometries may not be redundant factors and might be used for horizontal stress estimation.

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Abbreviations

\(\sigma_{H}\) :

Maximum horizontal principal stress

\(\sigma_{h}\) :

Minimum horizontal principal stress

\(\sigma_{v}\) :

Vertical horizontal principal stress

\(UCS\) :

Uniaxial compressive strength

\(R\) :

Hole size

\(L\) :

Breakout depth

\(L/R\) :

Normalised breakout depth

\(\theta_{b}\) :

Breakout angular span

\(\sigma_{\theta }\) :

Tangential stress

\(\sigma_{r}\) :

Radial stress

\(\tau_{r\theta }\) :

Shear stress

\(S_{H}\) :

Maximum effective horizontal principal stresses

\(S_{h}\) :

Minimum effective horizontal principal stresses

\(\Delta P\) :

The difference between fluid pressure and the pore pressure

\(BWS\) :

Borehole wall strength

\(T\) :

Rock tensile strength

\(\tau_{s}\) :

Rock shear strength

\(P_{T}\) :

Applied uniaxial stress for fracture initiation along the primary wall

\(P_{S}\) :

Applied uniaxial stress required for fracture initiation at the sidewall

\(d\) :

Stress averaging distance (material property)

\(E\) :

Young’s modulus

\(v\) :

Poisson’s ratio

\(K_{IC}\) :

Fracture toughness

\(k\) :

Empirical positive constant, < 1

\(\lambda\) :

Empirical length (material property)

\(a\) :

Horizontal stress ratio

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Acknowledgements

The work reported here is funded by Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP), Grant no. C26063.

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  1. School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    H. Lin, J. Oh & I. Canbulat

  2. School of Mining Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa

    T. R. Stacey

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Lin, H., Oh, J., Canbulat, I. et al. Experimental and Analytical Investigations of the Effect of Hole Size on Borehole Breakout Geometries for Estimation of In Situ Stresses. Rock Mech Rock Eng 53, 781–798 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-019-01944-z

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