Special Issue: Fractals in Unconventional Reservoirs — Part II; ArticleOpen Access

EFFECT OF FRACTAL FRACTURES ON PERMEABILITY IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL DIGITAL ROCKS

Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, P. R. China

State Key Laboratory of Enhanced Oil Recovery, Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development, CNPC, Beijing, P. R. China

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GUOLIANG YAN

Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development, Northwest, CNPC, Lanzhou, P. R. China

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YONGDONG LIU

Faculty of Science, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, P. R. China

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XUEFENG LIU

Faculty of Science, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, P. R. China

E-mail Address: liuxf@upc.edu.cn

Corresponding authors.

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DONGXING DU

Faculty of Electromechanical Engineering, Geo-Energy Research Institute, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, P. R. China

E-mail Address: du-dongxing@qust.edu.cn

Corresponding authors.

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, and

RONG WANG

Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, P. R. China

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218348X19400152Cited by:9 (Source: Crossref)

This article is part of the issue:

Special Issue: Fractals in Unconventional Reservoirs — Part II

Abstract

The fracture has great impact on the flow behavior in fractured reservoirs. Fracture traces are usually self-similar and scale-independent, which makes the fractal theory become a powerful tool to characterize fracture. To obtain three-dimensional (3D) digital rocks reflecting the properties of fractured reservoirs, we first generate discrete fracture networks by stochastic modeling based on the fractal theory. These fracture networks are then added to the existing digital rocks of rock matrixes. We combine two low-permeable cores as rock matrixes with a group of discrete fracture networks with fractal characteristics. Various types of fractured digital rocks are obtained by adjusting different fracture parameters. Pore network models are extracted from the 3D fractured digital rock. Then the permeability is predicted by Darcy law to investigate the impacts of fracture properties to the absolute permeability. The permeability of fractured rock is subject to exponential increases with fracture aperture. The relationship between the permeability and the fractal dimension of fracture centers is exponential, as well as the relationship between permeability and the fractal dimension of fracture lengths.

Keywords:

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Vol. 27, No. 01

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History

Received 20 November 2018

Accepted 10 January 2019

Published: February 4, 2019

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This is an Open Access article published by World Scientific Publishing Company. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) License. Further distribution of this work is permitted, provided the original work is properly cited.

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EFFECT OF FRACTAL FRACTURES ON PERMEABILITY IN THREE-DIMENSIONAL DIGITAL ROCKS

Abstract

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