Hydro mechanical coupling using a hybrid dimensional approach and interface element formulations

Abstract

AbstractCharacteristics of underground fluid storage and properties related to heat transport and underground matter are of high interest in the community of porous and fractures media. Especially once hydro‐mechanical phenomena in fluid filled fractures are of interest, such as inverse waterlevel fluctuations during well stimulations (Noordbergum effect), the numerical coupling of the fluid and the porous domain is challenging. Existing strategies such as direct numerical simulations or coarse‐grained approaches (Biot's theory) either fail due to technical issues (number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF)) or are not capable of intuitively taking permeability changes based on the deformation state into account. This work proposes a fully coupled scheme using hybrid‐dimensional element formulations and zero‐thickness interface elements that naturally describes flow in deformable fractures surrounded by porous media.