Phase field model of fluid-driven fracture in elastic media: Immersed-fracture formulation and validation with analytical solutions
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Juanes_Phase-field model.pdf
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Author(s)
Santillan, David
Cueto-Felgueroso Landeira, Luis
Juanes, Ruben
Date Issued
March 2017
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Santillán, David, Ruben Juanes, and Luis Cueto-Felgueroso. “Phase Field Model of Fluid-Driven Fracture in Elastic Media: Immersed-Fracture Formulation and Validation with Analytical Solutions: PHASE FIELD MODEL FLUID-DRIVEN FRACTURE.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 122.4 (2017): 2565–2589. © 2017 American Geophysical Union.
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Final published version
Abstract
Propagation of fluid-driven fractures plays an important role in natural and engineering processes, including transport of magma in the lithosphere, geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide, and oil and gas recovery from low-permeability formations, among many others. The simulation of fracture propagation poses a computational challenge as a result of the complex physics of fracture and the need to capture disparate length scales. Phase field models represent fractures as a diffuse interface and enjoy the advantage that fracture nucleation, propagation, branching, or twisting can be simulated without ad hoc computational strategies like remeshing or local enrichment of the solution space. Here we propose a new quasi-static phase field formulation for modeling fluid-driven fracturing in elastic media at small strains. The approach fully couples the fluid flow in the fracture (described via the Reynolds lubrication approximation) and the deformation of the surrounding medium. The flow is solved on a lower dimensionality mesh immersed in the elastic medium. This approach leads to accurate coupling of both physics. We assessed the performance of the model extensively by comparing results for the evolution of fracture length, aperture, and fracture fluid pressure against analytical solutions under different fracture propagation regimes. The excellent performance of the numerical model in all regimes builds confidence in the applicability of phase field approaches to simulate fluid-driven fracture.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JB013572
