Abstract
Understanding the fluid behaviour in rock masses is of great importance in various rock mass-related engineering projects, such as seepage in tunnels, geothermal reservoirs, and hazardous waste disposal. Different approaches have been implemented to study the flow pattern in fractured porous rock masses. Laboratory experiments can provide good information regarding this issue, but high expenses aside, they are time-consuming and suffer the lack of ability to study field scale mediums. Numerical methods are beneficial in simulating such mediums with the Discrete Fracture Network (DFN) method in terms of costs and time as they offer sufficient flexibility and creativity. In this paper, a Matlab code was extended to study the flow regime in a Dual Permeability Media (DPM) with two point sources in the right and left side of the model as an injector and a producer well, respectively. A high permeability discontinuity with different angles was embedded in a very low-permeability limestone matrix. Pressure equations were solved implicitly with a two-point flux approximation scheme of the Finite Volume Method (FVM). Streamlines were traced in the medium and used to analyse the model’s hydraulic behaviour with the aid of Time Of Flight (TOF) for each point. The results show that the FVM-DFN hybrid method can be used as a fast method for fluid flow in DPM with the aid of streamline simulation to study the fluid flow in a large model with discontinuity.
Highlights
Different types of discontinuities, such as bedding planes, joints, fractures and faults are present in the upper layer of the Earth’s crust
Without good insight into the fractured rock mass flow pattern and geometry, it would be impossible to implement the project with the desired efficiency (Macenić et al, 2018)
Almost every kind of rock has some level of permeability
Summary
Different types of discontinuities, such as bedding planes, joints, fractures and faults are present in the upper layer of the Earth’s crust. Such discontinuities form a complex system that makes significant changes, in the mechanical behaviour of the rock mass, but in its hydraulic behaviour as well. A rock mass consists of an impermeable matrix, which cannot conduct fluids, and a system of fractures is the only channel for fluid to flow through. In underground mining and tunnelling in porous rocks, fluid flow can play a significant role in both designing and implementing the designed outline. Even in the prediction of pollution migration in underground water, the results are highly dependent on the behaviour of the underground water, which is mainly controlled and dominated by the fracture system and Stanković, S.; Žbulj, M.; Škrlec, V
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