Liu, D;
(2023)
Early-Time Shut-In for Plane-Strain Hydraulic Fractures.
Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering
10.1007/s00603-023-03314-2.
(In press).
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Abstract
One investigates the post-shut-in growth of a plane-strain hydraulic fracture in an impermeable medium while accounting for the possible presence of a fluid lag. After the stop of fluid injection, the fracture may present three distinct propagation patterns: an immediate arrest, a temporary arrest with delayed propagation, and a continuous fracture growth. These three patterns are all followed by a final fracture arrest yet the fracture behaviour prior to that results from the interplay between the dimensionless toughness Km, the shut-in time ts/ tom, and the propagation time t/ ts. Km characterizes the energy dissipation ratio between fracture surface creation and viscous fluid flow under constant rate injection. ts and tom represent respectively the timescale of shut-in and the coalescence of the fluid and fracture fronts. The immediate arrest occurs when the fracture toughness dominates the fracture growth at the stop of injection (Km⪆ 4.3). It may also occur upon an early shut-in at low dimensionless toughness associated with an overshoot of fracture extension and a significant fluid lag. For intermediate values of Km and ts/ tom, the fracture may experience a temporary arrest followed by a restart of fracture propagation. The period of the temporary arrest becomes shorter with higher dimensionless toughness and later shut-in until it drops to zero. The fracture behaviour after shut-in then transitions from temporary arrest to continuous propagation. These propagation patterns result in different evolution of fracture dimensions which possibly explains the various emplacement scaling relations reported in magmatic dikes.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Early-Time Shut-In for Plane-Strain Hydraulic Fractures |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00603-023-03314-2 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-023-03314-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Shut-in, Fluid lag, Cavitation, Fracture arrest, Step-wise fracture propagation |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10168124 |
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