Hydraulic fracture propagation under the influence of natural fractures

Abstract eng:
We developed a partition of unity based numerical model for hydraulic fracturing. The discontinuity in the displacement field due to the fracture is incorporated with the traditional Heaviside enrichment used in X-FEM. Poro-elastic effects are included by using Biot’s theory. The pressure in the fracture is calculated by an additional degree of freedom that describes mass balance in the fracture. Fluid leakage is incorporated with an analytical solution based on Terzaghi’s consolidation equation. The fracture process is governed by a cohesive traction separation law. In this contribution we show recent advancements we made in investigating the influence of natural fracture networks on the advancements of hydraulic fractures.

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