Speaker
Description
Hydraulic fracturing in laminated continental shale commonly generates complex fracture systems, in which fracture geometry plays a critical role in proppant transport and placement. However, most existing studies rely on idealized planar fracture assumptions, which limits the mechanistic understanding of proppant placement failure under complex fracture geometries.In this study, large-scale true triaxial physical simulation experiments were conducted to investigate the geometric characteristics of fracture propagation and their control on proppant transport and placement in laminated continental shale. The results show that hydraulic fractures exhibit pronounced geometric nonlinearity due to the coupled effects of in-situ stress and bedding-plane weakness, manifested by frequent fracture deflection, multi-level branching, and spatially non-uniform fracture width. Quantitative indicators, including fracture deflection angle, branching density, and fracture width variation coefficient, were introduced to characterize fracture geometric nonlinearity and to identify distinct spatial zones from near-well unstable propagation to far-field stable propagation.Further analysis indicates a strong correlation between proppant placement efficiency and fracture geometric nonlinearity. Proppant accumulation and bridging preferentially occur in zones with strong geometric nonlinearity, such as fracture deflection points, branching initiation locations, and abrupt width variation regions. These phenomena are attributed to flow-field heterogeneity induced by fracture geometric nonlinearity rather than to injection parameter limitations alone.This study elucidates the intrinsic coupling mechanism between fracture geometric evolution and proppant placement behavior in laminated shale, providing new mechanistic insights for hydraulic fracturing design in complex shale reservoirs.
| Country | China |
|---|---|
| Student Awards | I would like to submit this presentation into the Earth Energy Science (EES) and Capillarity Student Poster Awards. |
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