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Investigation of thermal-hydro-mechanical coupled fracture propagation considering rock damage

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Abstract

Thermal-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupled fracture propagation is common in underground engineering. Rock damage, as an inherent property of rock, significantly affects fracture propagation, but how it influences the THM coupled fracturing remains stubbornly unclear. A pore-scale THM coupling model is developed to study this problem, which combines the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), the discrete element method (DEM), and rock damage development theory together for the first time. This model can more accurately calculate the exchanged THM information at the fluid-solid boundary and fluid conductivity dependent on fracture and rock damage. Based on the developed model, the synergistic effect of injected temperature difference (fluid temperature below rock temperature) and rock damage (characterized by the parameter “critical fracture energy”, abbreviated as “CFE”) on fracture propagation of shale are investigated particularly. It is found that: (1) the generation of branched cracks is closely related to the temperature response frontier, and the fracture process zone of single bond failure increases in higher CFE. (2) through the analysis of micro failure events, hydraulic fracturing is more pronounced in the low CFE, while thermal fracturing displays the opposite trend. The fluid conductivity of fractured rock increases with a higher injected temperature difference due to the more penetrated cracks and wider fracture aperture. However, this enhancement weakens when rock damage is significant. (3) in the multiple-layered rock with various CFEs, branched cracks propagating to adjacent layers are more difficult to form when the injection hole stays in the layer with significant rock damage than without rock damage.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51936001, No. 51904031), Natural Science Foundation of Beijing (No. 22C20027) and Award Cultivation Foundation from Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology (No. BIPTACF-002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Kaituo Jiao & Bofeng Bai

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Pipeline Critical Technology and Equipment for Deepwater Oil & Gas Development, Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology, Beijing, 102617, China

    Dongxu Han, Daobing Wang, Jingfa Li & Bo Yu

  3. Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of MOE, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Yujie Chen

  4. College of New Energy, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, China

    Liang Gong

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  1. Kaituo Jiao
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Jiao, K., Han, D., Wang, D. et al. Investigation of thermal-hydro-mechanical coupled fracture propagation considering rock damage. Comput Geosci 26, 1167–1187 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-022-10155-5

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