• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.468-471
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• 2004

Groundwater development as a means of acquiring subsidiary water resource is very important for the persistent security of water resource. Nowadays, pneumatic fracturing technology which was developed in the advanced countries is applied for increasing pumping rate and eliminating contaminants. From the results of this study, hydraulic aperture and permeability are presented.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.321-333
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• 2023

Rock masses often contain natural fractures of varying sizes, and the size of the natural fractures may affect the propagation of hydraulic fractures. We conduct a series of triaxial hydraulic fracturing tests to investigate the effect of the pre-existing fracture size a on hydraulic fracture propagation. Experimental results show that the pre-existing fracture size impacts hydraulic fracture propagation. As the pre-existing fracture size increases, the hydraulic fracture propagates towards the pre-existing fracture tips, evidenced by the decreased distance between the final hydraulic fracture and the pre-existing fracture tips. Furthermore, the attracting effect of pre-existing fracture tips increases when the distance between the wellbore and the pre-existing fracture is short (L/D=2 or 4 in this study). With increased distance between the wellbore and the pre-existing fracture (L/D=6 in this study), the hydraulic fracture propagates to the middle of the pre-existing fracture rather than the tips, as the attracting effect of the pre-existing fracture diminishes.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2018

Brazilian splitting tests, uniaxial compression tests and triaxial compression tests are carried out on the coal samples cored from Shanxi group $II_1$ coal seam of Jiaozuo coal mine, Henan province, China, to obtain their property parameters. Considering the bedding has notable effect on the property parameter of coal, the samples with different bedding angles are prepared. The effects of bedding on the anisotropic characteristics of the coal seam are investigated. A geological geomechanical model is built based on the geology characteristics of the Jiaozuo coal mine target reservoir to study the effects of bedding on the fracture propagations during hydraulic fracturing. The effects of injection pressure, well completion method, in-situ stress difference coefficient, and fracturing fluid displacement on the fracture propagations are investigated. Results show bedding has notable effects on the property parameters of coal, which is the key factor affecting the anisotropy of coal. The hydraulic cracks trends to bifurcate and swerve at the bedding due to its low strength. Induced fractures are produced easily at the locations around the bedding. The bedding is beneficial to form a complicated fracture network. Experimental and numerical simulations can help to understand the effects of bedding on hydraulic fracturing in coalbed methane reservoirs.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.129-138
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• 1995

To elucidate the effects of flow rate on the hydraulic fracturing property of andesite, the hydraulic fracturing tests were conducted under three flow rates. As the tests are conducted with 1ml/min, 2ml/min and 3 ml/min under the constant axial load of 40 kN, the breakdown pressures of andesite seem to be constant as 163kg/cm$^2$. The hydraulic fracturing tests were carried out under the temperatures of five stages to elucidate the effects of temperature variation on hydraulic fracturing property of granite. As the tests are carried out under the constant flow rate of 1.7ml/min, with the axial load of 40kN, the breakdown pressures of granite are 168kg/cm$^2$ at room temperature, and 124kg/cm$^2$ at 20$0^{\circ}C$. The breakdown pressure decreases about 25% than that of room temperature with increasing the temperature. Under the controlled flow rates, the initiation pressures of the microcracks of granite are well coincided with the breakdown pressures and these results are also confirmed by the levels of acoustic emission.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.57-70
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• 2002

Since early in the 90's, the need for construction of underground rock structures such as long and large section traffic tunnel, energy storage cavern, industrial facility, etc. has been largely increased because the Korean territory is not wide and about 65 % of the land consists of mountainous region. The initial rock stress measurement has been widely conducted to provide the quantitative information on the stress state of engineering site at the design stage of underground rock structures. Among the diverse methods developed for measuring rock stress, hydraulic fracturing test is most popularly used because it is applicable at pre-construction stage and has no limit in testing depth. In this paper, the characteristics of initial rock stress state in mountainous region were studied on the basis of the in-situ hydraulic fracturing stress measurement results from the 60 test boreholes in various parts of Korea.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.153-172
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• 2014

In order to investigate the effect of different perforation angles (the angle between the perforation direction and the maximum horizontal principal stress) on the fracture initiation and propagation during hydraulic fracturing of highly deviated well in oil & gas saturated formation, laboratory experiments of the hydraulic fracturing had been carried out on the basis of non-dimensional similar criteria by using 400^3 $mm^3$ cement cubes. A plane fracture can be produced when the perforations are placed in the direction of the maximum horizontal principal stress. When the perforation angle is $45^{\circ}$, the fractures firstly initiate from the perforations at the upper side of the wellbore, and then turn to the maximum horizontal principal stress direction. When the well deviation angle and perforation angle are both between $45^{\circ}$ and $90^{\circ}$, the fractures hardly initiate from the perforations at the lower side of the wellbore. Well azimuth (the angle between the wellbore axis and the maximum horizontal principal stress) has a little influence on the fracture geometries; however it mainly increases the fracture roughness, fracture continuity and the number of secondary fractures, and also increases the fracture initiation and propagation pressure. Oriented perforating technology should be applied in highly deviated well to obtain a single plane fracture. If the well deviation angle is smaller, the fractures may link up.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1207-1217
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• 2018

Geomechanics parameters are critical to numerical simulation, stability analysis, design and construction of geotechnical engineering. Due to the limitations of laboratory and in situ experiments, back analysis is widely used in geomechancis and geotechnical engineering. In this study, a hybrid back analysis method, that coupling numerical simulation, response surface (RS) and relevance vector machine (RVM), was proposed and applied to identify geomechanics parameters from hydraulic fracturing. RVM was adapted to approximate complex functional relationships between geomechanics parameters and borehole pressure through coupling with response surface method and numerical method. Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm was used to search the geomechanics parameters as optimal method in back analysis. The proposed method was verified by a numerical example. Based on the geomechanics parameters identified by hybrid back analysis, the computed borehole pressure agreed closely with the monitored borehole pressure. It showed that RVM presented well the relationship between geomechanics parameters and borehole pressure, and the proposed method can characterized the geomechanics parameters reasonably. Further, the parameters of hybrid back analysis were analyzed and discussed. It showed that the hybrid back analysis is feasible, effective, robust and has a good global searching performance. The proposed method provides a significant way to identify geomechanics parameters from hydraulic fracturing.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.28 no.B
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• pp.111-116
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• 2008

Since the hydraulic fracturing field testing method was introduced first to Korean geotechnical engineers in 1994, there have been lots of progresses in a hardware system as well as an interpretation tool. The hydrofracturing system of first generation was the pipe-line type, and it has been developed to a wire-line system at their second generation. The current up-to-date system is more compact and is able to be operated by all-in-one system. With a progress in a hardware system, the software for analyzing in-situ stress regime has also been progressed. The shut-in pressure, which is the most ambiguous parameter to be obtained from hydrofracturing pressure curves, can now be acquired automatically from the various methods. While the hardware and software for hydrofracturing tests are being developed during the last decade, the author could accumulate the field test results which can cover the almost whole area of South Korea. Currently these field data are used widely in a feasibility study or a preliminary design step for tunnel construction in Korea. Regarding the difficulties in a site selection and a test performance for the in-situ stress measurement at an off-shore area, the in-situ stress regime obtained from the field experiences in the land area can be used indirectly for the design of a sub-sea tunnel. From the hydrofracturing stress measurements, the trend of magnitude and direction of in-situ stress field was shown identically with the geological information in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.431-438
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• 2005

In this paper, the characteristics of excessive horizontal stress components in Korea were studied using the in-situ hydraulic fracturing stress measurement data over five hundred in 110 individual test boreholes. Based on the in-situ testing data, the magnitude and orientation of the horizontal stress component and variation of stress ratio (K) with depth were investigated. And also horizontal stress magnitude versus depth relationships and distribution limits of stress ratio components were suggested. For the subsurface space above 310 m depth in the entire territory, the stress ratio has a tendency to diminish and be stabilized with depth, but for some areas, it was revealed that the excessive horizontal stress fields with stress ratio close to 3.0 below 200 m in depth have formed. The result of investigation for excessive horizontal stress regions indicates that there exist several regions above 300 m in depth where localized excessive horizontal stresses enough to induce potentially brittle failure around future openings have formed.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.91-107
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• 2014

Using the principle of damage mechanics, zero-thickness pore pressure cohesive elements (PPCE) are used to simulate the casing-cement interface (CCI) and cement-rock interface (CRI). The traction-separation law describes the emergence and propagation of the PPCE. Mohr-coulomb criteria determines the elastic and plastic condition of cement sheath and rock. The finite element model (FEM) of delamination fractures emergence and propagation along the casing-cement-rock (CCR) interfaces during hydraulic fracturing is established, and the emergence and propagation of fractures along the wellbore axial and circumferential direction are simulated. Regadless of the perforation angle (the angle between the perforation and the max. horizontal principle stress), mirco-annulus will be produced alonge the wellbore circumferential direction when the cementation strength of the CCI and the CRI is less than the rock tensile strength; the delamination fractures are hard to propagate along the horizontal wellbore axial direction; emergence and propagation of delamination fractures are most likely produced on the shallow formation when the in-situ stresses are lower; the failure mode of cement sheath in the deep well is mainly interfaces seperation and body damange caused by cement expansion and contraction, or pressure testing and well shut-in operations.