Impact of Confining Stress on Capillary Pressure Behavior During Drainage Through Rough Fractures
Name
dasilva_etal_grl_2019.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
5.1 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Silva, Josimar A.
Kang, Peter K.
Yang, Zhibing
Cueto-Felgueroso Landeira, Luis
Juanes, Ruben
Date Issued
July 2019
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Silva, Josimar A. et al. "Impact of Confining Stress on Capillary Pressure Behavior During Drainage Through Rough Fractures." Geophysical Research Letters 46, 13 (July 2019): 7424-7436 © 2019 American Geophysical Union
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We study, numerically, the behavior of capillary pressure (Pc) during slow immiscible displacement in a rough fracture as a function of the degree of fracture aperture heterogeneity that results from two distinct mechanisms: normal confining stress and fracture surface correlation. We generate synthetic self-affine rough fractures at different correlation scales, solve the elastic contact problem to model the effect of confining stress, and simulate slow immiscible displacement of a wetting fluid by a nonwetting one using a modified invasion percolation model that accounts for in-plane curvature of the fluid-fluid interface. Our modeling results indicate that the power spectral density, S(f), of Pc, can be used to qualitatively characterize fracture aperture heterogeneity. We show that the distribution of forward avalanche sizes follows a power law Nf(Sf) ∝ Sf−α, with exponent α=2, in agreement with previously reported values for porous media and equal to the expected theoretical exponent for a self-organized criticality process.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019gl082744
