Pressure distribution in the neighborhood of a growing fracture with a constant wedge force

Abstract

Exact solutions of the problem of the pressure field in the neighborhood of a hydraulic fracture developing in accordance with a square root law in a permeable porous medium with a constant wedge force acting on the fracture edges are constructed. A particular case admitting a self-similar formulation and an exact solution and, as a result, the fairly complete investigation, is considered. The solution constructed holds for an arbitrary self-similar pressure distribution over the fracture edges. The problem considered reduces to the solution of a mixed boundary-value problem for the Helmholtz equation. The solution found can be useful both in itself and for testing more universal numerical algorithms.