On the residual opening of cracks with rough faces stimulted by shear slip

Abstract

The hydraulic stimulation of fractures has been widely employed worldwide for increasing the productivity of hydrocarbon reservoirs. Many exciting potential applications of this technique, specifically for geothermal reservoirs and coal seam gas (CSG) industries stipulate a strong need for new theoretical models and solutions capable to describe the residual fracture openings after hydraulic stimulations. In this paper a new mechanical model to predict the roughness induced fracture residual opening due to shear slip is developed. It is based on simplified and well established mechanical models of shear slip and contact law of rough surfaces. The solution procedure utilises the distributed dislocation technique, which reduces the governing system to a system of singular equations. The latter is solved using the standard Gauss-Chebyshev quadrature method.