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Trace analysis for fracture networks of any convex shape
Author(s) -
Thovert J.F.,
Adler P. M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2004gl021317
Subject(s) - fracture (geology) , dimensionless quantity , geology , anisotropy , consistency (knowledge bases) , field (mathematics) , regular polygon , trace (psycholinguistics) , geometry , mathematics , mechanics , geotechnical engineering , physics , optics , linguistics , philosophy , pure mathematics
Statistical properties of traces of fracture networks are related to the fracture volumetric density and to the average fracture surface and perimeter. These relations which hold whatever the fracture shapes provided that they are convex, can be extended to anisotropic networks. These relations can be used to check the statistical consistency of field data and to obtain macroscopic quantities such as the dimensionless density ρ′ which controls the geometric and transport properties of fractured media. A field example of anisotropic subvertical fractures whose sizes obey a power law, is analyzed along these lines.