Secondary Thermal Cracks in EGS: A Variational Approach
- Key words
- EGS; Reservoir stimulation; Secondary thermal cracks; Numberical simulation; Fracture
- Conference
- Geothermal Resources Council Transactions
- Year
- 2010
- Session
- HDR/EGS; Hydraulic fracturing
- Language
- English
Abstract
We present a mechanistically faithful and mathematically sound approach to the numerical simulation of secondary thermal cracks propagation in EGS based on the variational approach to fracture [1-4]. While remaining compatible with classical theories, this approach provides a unified framework to crack nucleation, full path identification, including interaction between multiple cracks, branching or kinking in 2 and 3D. We present large scale numerical experiments, and compare our results with the literature.
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