Numerical investigation of transport behaviors of nonspherical proppants in hydraulic fracturing using CFD-DEM

Abstract

During hydraulic fracturing, conventional spherical proppant particles tend to settle rapidly in a low-viscosity fluid, which results in low permeability and poor supporting performance in the fractures. In this study, we introduce two types of novel nonspherical proppant particles; the transport processes of both the novel and conventional proppants in hydraulic fractures are simulated using the coupled computational fluid dynamics and discrete element method approach and multisphere modeling. We compare the differences in the transport performances of the nonspherical and spherical proppants. Sensitivity analysis of the fluid viscosity and particle density in the transport process revealed that both novel non-spherical proppants have better transport performance than the conventional spherical proppant. These results provide a strong basis for future proppant design and engineering practices.