Technology Focus: Hydraulic Fracturing Modeling (November 2024)

Abstract

The papers highlighted in this section demonstrate the merging of the theoretical and empirical to solve practical problems, addressing topics such as casing deformation, condensate banking, and mitigation of fracture-driven interactions. Hydraulic fracture modeling requires blending the theoretical with the empirical. We have a good understanding of the fundamental physics—conservation of mass, continuum mechanics, and so on. However, the devil is in the details, especially when we consider field-scale problems where data are sparse and fracture morphologies are nonideal. What are the appropriate modeling inputs? What constitutive relations should we use to describe the details? What are appropriate assumptions about fracture geometry? These questions are tractable, but they require a humble, empirically driven perspective. Processes can behave very differently at field scale than at the laboratory scale, so, while bench-top experiments play an important role, we must be primarily driven by measurements gathered in the field. Beyond pure hydraulic fracture modeling, a variety of numerical modeling approaches can contribute by addressing a particular applied problem. For example, paper SPE 217762 (listed in the Additional Reading section below) performs computational fluid dynamics modeling of fluid flow through perforation tunnels. The goal is to improve the accuracy of the flow allocations derived from fiber-optic measurements, which are important calibration data for perforation design and fracture modeling generally. These data are important because understanding far-field fracture propagation requires characterizing transport in the well and the near-wellbore region. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. URTeC 4044603 Leveraging Oil and Water Time-Lapse Geochemistry and Well Diagnostics To Understand Drainage and Opportunity for Infill Development in a Stacked Pay Asset, Avalon to Wolfcamp, Delaware Basin, New Mexico by Peter J. Jones, Devon Energy, et al. SPE 214878 Efficient Modeling of Proppant Transport in Multicluster Stages by J. Wang, The University of Texas at Austin, et al. SPE 217762 Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of Acoustics Generated by Fluid Flow Through a Perforation by Yasuyuki Hamanaka, Texas A&M University, et al.