Abstract
Abstract. Regional subsidence due to fluid depletion includes the interaction among multiple physical processes. Specifically, rock compaction is governed by coupled hydro-mechanical feedbacks involving fluid flow, effective stress change and pore collapse. Although poroelastic models are often used to explain the delay between depletion and subsidence, recent evidence indicates that inelastic effects could alter the rock microstructure, thus exacerbating coupling effects. Here, a constitutive law built within the framework of Breakage Mechanics is proposed to account for the inherent connection between rock microstructure, hydraulic conductivity, and pore compaction. Furthermore, it is embedded into a 1-D hydromechanical coupled finite element analysis (FEA) to explore the effects of micro-structure rearrangement on the development of reservoir compaction. Numerical examples with the proposed model are compared with simulations under constant hydraulic conductivity to illustrate the model capability to capture the non-linear processes of reservoir compaction induced by fluid depletion.
Highlights
Various anthropogenic activities are responsible for the occurrence of surface subsidence and damage to buildings and infrastructure
Microstructure evolution caused by stress changes is a major cause of the inelastic deformation and hydro-mechanical coupling
A constitutive law has been developed within the framework of Breakage Mechanics to link the micro-scale and the macro-scale response of a compacting rock, as well as to estimate the permeability variations caused by breakage
Summary
Various anthropogenic activities are responsible for the occurrence of surface subsidence and damage to buildings and infrastructure. Poroelastic models restrict the analysis to linear deformation processes, ruling out possible inelastic changes in rock microstructure (i.e., particle crushing, particle rearrangement, and pore collapse) caused by compaction and the consequent hydro-mechanical couplings deriving from them (Esna Ashari et al, 2018). In this circumstance, more advanced constitutive laws are needed to capture the material properties and connect the particle-scale processes to macro-scale fluid flow characteristics. Different modeling scenarios (e.g., elastic and inelastic compaction, constant hydraulic conductivity, and concurrent change of compressibility and hydraulic conductivity) are simulated to illustrate the potential impact of inelastic processes on reservoir compaction
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