Modelling hydraulic fractures in porous media using flow cohesive interface elements

Abstract

This paper revisits the problem of computational modelling of a fluid-driven fracture propagating in a permeable porous medium using zero-thickness flow cohesive interface elements. Both cases of continuous and discontinuous pressure field across the fractures are implemented in a unified formulation. The paper provides computational aspects of hydraulic fracture modelling such as mesh generation, execution time, convergence and numerical integration issues. We show that Newton-Cotes quadrature must be used for quadratic flow cohesive interface elements at least for the presented problems. Our simulations exhibit the so-called intermittent crack tip advancement as recently confirmed in the literature. This paper is addressed to researchers who would like to have a quick working implementation of the zero-thickness flow cohesive interface elements for simulating hydraulic fracturing processes with finite elements.