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Investigation of heterogeneous fracture aperture distributions in a hydro mechanical setting using hybrid‐dimensional interface elements
Author(s) -
Schmidt Patrick,
Steeb Holger
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
pamm
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1617-7061
DOI - 10.1002/pamm.202000030
Subject(s) - biot number , poromechanics , fracture (geology) , coupling (piping) , mechanics , porous medium , deformation (meteorology) , porosity , materials science , work (physics) , computer science , physics , mechanical engineering , composite material , engineering
In the community of porous and fractured geomaterials properties regarding underground fluid storage and matter are of high interest. Investigations on fluid‐filled fractures require strong hydro mechanical coupling of fracture and porous domain to reproduce deformation triggered, non‐local phenomena such as the Noordbergum effect. Special numerical treatment is necessary to solve the tightly coupled system consisting of high aspect ratio fractures and a surrounding porous matrix, since other approaches such as Direct Numerical Simulations fail due to technical issues (number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF)). Once heterogeneous initial aperture distributions are of interest coarse grained continuum approaches (Biot's poroelasticity theory) facing technical limitations since explicit meshing of the fracture geometry is required. This work uses hybrid‐dimensional interface elements in a fully coupled implicit formulation to investigate its capacities regarding heterogeneous fracture surfaces in three dimensions.