Premium
How Equivalent Are Equivalent Porous Media?
Author(s) -
Zareidarmiyan Ahmad,
Parisio Francesco,
Makhnenko Roman Y.,
Salarirad Hossein,
Vilarrasa Victor
Publication year - 2021
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 - 10.1029/2020gl089163
Subject(s) - porous medium , poromechanics , induced seismicity , fracture (geology) , geology , mechanics , stability (learning theory) , pore water pressure , porosity , coupling (piping) , computer science , geotechnical engineering , materials science , physics , seismology , machine learning , metallurgy
Geoenergy and geoengineering applications usually involve fluid injection into and production from fractured media. Accounting for fractures is important because of the strong poromechanical coupling that ties pore pressure changes and deformation. A possible approach to the problem uses equivalent porous media to reduce the computational cost and model complexity instead of explicitly including fractures in the models. We investigate the validity of this simplification by comparing these two approaches. Simulation results show that pore pressure distribution significantly differs between the two approaches even when both are calibrated to predict identical values at the injection and production wells. Additionally, changes in fracture stability are not well captured with the equivalent porous medium. We conclude that explicitly accounting for fractures in numerical models may be necessary under some circumstances to perform reliable coupled thermohydromechanical simulations, which could be used in conjunction with other tools for induced seismicity forecasting.