• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.93-100
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• 2005

The occurrence of multi-segmented hydraulic fractures that show different behavior from the single fracture is common phenomenon. However, it is not easy to evaluate the behavior of multiple fractures computed by most numerical techniques because of complicated process computation. This study presents how to efficiently calculate the displacement of the multi-segmented hydraulic fractures using the boundary collocation method (BCM). First of all, asymptotic solutions are obtained for the closely spaced overlapping fractures and are compared with those by the BCM where the number of collocation points is varied. As a result, the BCM provides an excellent agreement with the asymptotic solutions even when the number of collocation points is reduced ten times as many as that of conventional implementations. Accordingly, the numerical simulation of more realistic and, hence, more complex fracture geometries by the BCM would be valid with such a significant reduction of the number of collocation points.