Theoretical analysis of high flow conductivity of a fracture induced in HiWay fracturing

Abstract

HiWay (or channel) fracturing has been a new technology for development of unconventional oil and gas resources in recent years. It has been carried out more than 4000 times worldwide, and obtained good performance in oil and gas recovery. HiWay fracturing improves the flow conductivity of fractures by constructing inhomogeneous distributions of proppant and stable, open flow channel in hydraulic fractures. However, the mechanism and impact factors of high flow conductivity of HiWay fractures are not very clear. To the best of our knowledge, there are no relevant research reports available for such analysis. In this paper, it is first assumed that the fluid flow in proppant clusters follows the Darcy's law and the flow in the channels with proppant clusters is laminar viscous flow, which can be described using Stokes equation. However, the coupling of Darcy-Stokes equations is difficult, and some untrivial interface conditions at the interface between the porous and free-flow regions should be introduced, this will increase greater complexity in numerical computation. As an alternative approach, the Darcy-Brinkman equation is often used for this coupling flow problem, which provides a unified equation with continuous variable coefficients in the two different flow regions. Therefore, there is not necessary to introduce specific interface conditions any more. In this work, we first applied the Darcy-Brinkman equation to model the fluid flow in hydraulic fractures, and then the upscaling of Darcy-Brinkman equation is conducted to evaluate the equivalent permeability of a fracture by using homogenization theory and finite element numerical simulation. Finally, various impact factors of flow conductivity of a hydraulic fracture, such as the cluster shape, cluster distribution, cluster size, etc., are analyzed based on the equivalent permeability. Results show that the permeability of a hydraulic fracture is considerably greater than thst of proppant cluster when the free-flow region is well connected in the fracture, and the geometric properties of proppant clusters are also the key influencing factors for the flow conductivity. Therefore, in HiWay fracturing process, how to construct the well-connected free-flow region in hydraulic fractures is most important, and the flow conductivity of proppant cluster is not the keypoint. However, the surface roughness and stress sensitivity of the hydraulic fractures have not been considered in this work, it will be considered in the future work.