Print Email Facebook Twitter Modeling Flow in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs: Effect of Fracture Aperture Distribution on Critical Sub-Network for Flow Title Modeling Flow in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs: Effect of Fracture Aperture Distribution on Critical Sub-Network for Flow Author Gong, J. Rossen, W.R. Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department Geoscience & Engineering Date 2014-10-19 Abstract Fracture network connectivity and aperture (or conductivity) distribution are two crucial features controlling the flow behavior of fractured formations. The effect of connectivity on flow properties is well documented. We focus here on the influence of fracture aperture distribution. We model a two-dimensional fractured reservoir in which the matrix is impermeable and the fractures are well-connected. The fractures obey a power-law length distribution, as observed in natural fracture networks. For the aperture distribution, since the information from subsurface fracture networks is limited, we test a number of cases: narrow and broad log-normal and power-law distributions, and one where aperture correlates with fracture length. We show that even a well-connected fracture network can behave like a network near the percolation threshold in some cases: i.e., most fractures can be eliminated leaving a critical sub-network with nearly the same permeability as the original fracture network. We determine how broad the aperture distribution must be to approach this behavior, and the dependence of the critical sub-network on the parameters of the aperture distribution. We also explore whether one can identify the critical sub-network without doing flow calculations. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:df3f6fea-79fe-4507-8d13-490ff32669a8 Publisher CARMA Source DFNE 2014: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Discrete Fracture Network Engineering, Vancouver, Canada, 19-22 October 2014 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2014 The Author(s) Files PDF 318249.pdf 1.6 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:df3f6fea-79fe-4507-8d13-490ff32669a8/datastream/OBJ/view