The interactions between multiple arbitrarily orientated inhomogeneities with thermo-porous eigenstrains and its applications in geothermal resources

Abstract

The thermo-poroelastic model for the fluid migration and heat transport around reservoir may be employed to deal with many geophysical problems including underground resources and bounding rock system, etc. In this paper, interactions between multiple ellipsoidal inhomogeneities with arbitrary orientations and eigenstrains caused by the change of pore fluid pressure, localized heating and cooling are investigated. On the basis of equivalent inclusion method (EIM), an approximate analytical method is presented to evaluate the full displacement, strain and stress fields for arbitrarily distributed inhomogeneities. This method is an effective and straightforward way to study the elastic fields of multiple inhomogeneities, since it avoids increasing the computational complexity. The illustrative benchmark studies are served to demonstrate the accuracy of the present algorithm. Furthermore, applications in geostructures for the elastic distributions of arbitrarily orientated inhomogeneities subjected to the thermo-porous eigenstrains are provided, and the closed-form solutions for the degenerate case of spheroidal inclusions for both the prolate and oblate shapes, spherical and elliptical cylindrical inclusion are presented.