Long- and Short-Term Strategies for Estimation of Hydraulic Fracturing Cost Using Fuzzy Logic

Abstract

Over two decades, block caving mining has developed the application of hydraulic fracturing as a preconditioning method. This study aims to estimate hydraulic fracturing costs in block caving operations and suggests the base case of specified costs based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report. Furthermore, it applies cavability factors to develop the long- and short-term strategies through the fuzzy inference system. In the long-term strategy, we suggest three possible scenarios for reducing the long-term strategy’s uncertainty by considering the association for the advancement of cost engineering (AACE)’s contingency rate. Moreover, each fuzzy membership function of the three possible redeveloped scenarios was analysed through arithmetic operations over independent/dependent fuzzy numbers for comparing each scenario. The outcome of flexible cost estimation suggested deciding on the scale of infrastructure and ore production by facilitating undercut propagation and controlling block height of block caving operation including additional fragmentation processes. The result of this study also illustrated that systematic fuzzy cost engineering could help estimate the initial stage of budgeting. In addition, through solving the uncertainty of fuzzy calculation values, the project schedule identification is presented by recognising the dependence on each scenario’s common characteristic of the cavability parameter and cost contingency rate.