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Natural Fractures

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Encyclopedia of Petroleum Geoscience

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Definition

A fracture is a discontinuity or break in a rock, typically planar and commonly associated with a loss of cohesion in the rock across the fracture plane (e.g., Fossen 2010). Many fractures are filled by postfracturing mineralization, restoring some or all cohesion. Natural fractures are brittle to brittle-ductile strain-accommodation structures that develop when subsurface rock is deformed to the point of failure within a system of anisotropic, compressive stresses, and, commonly, high pore pressure.

Introduction

Fractures in rocks have been recognized since flint knappers and stone masons of antiquity made practical use of fracture fabrics to efficiently quarry and work stone. Rigorous scientific studies of fracture characteristics and their implications started in the 1800s with early classifications of fracture surface features and speculations on their origin (e.g., Woodworth 1896; Pollard and Aydin 1988). Early ideas about fracturing and the origin of stresses that...

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Acknowledgments

Reviews by David Holcomb and an anonymous reviewer are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. FractureStudies LLC, Edgewood, NM, USA

    John C. Lorenz & Scott P. Cooper

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  1. John C. Lorenz
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  2. Scott P. Cooper
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Correspondence to John C. Lorenz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Rasoul Sorkhabi

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Lorenz, J.C., Cooper, S.P. (2019). Natural Fractures. In: Sorkhabi, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Petroleum Geoscience. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02330-4_300-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02330-4_300-1

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