Related papers: Notes on Hydraulic Fracture Mechanics
Steel is a key structural material because of its considerable strength and ductility. However, when exposed to hydrogen, it is prone to embrittlement. Mechanistic understanding of the origin of hydrogen embrittlement is hampered by the…
Fluid-induced slip of fractures is characterized by strong multiphysics couplings. Three physical processes are considered: Flow, rock deformation and fracture deformation. The fractures are represented as lower-dimensional objects embedded…
Despite advances in manufacturing making metal functionally graded materials (FGMs) more common, numerical methods for predicting fracture in ductile functionally graded materials remain limited. In this work we study the crack propagation…
Statistics and thermally activated dynamics of crack nucleation and propagation in a two-dimensional heterogeneous material containing quenched randomly distributed defects are studied theoretically. Using the generalized Griffith criterion…
Fracture growth in a material is strongly influenced by the presence of inhomogeneities, which deviate crack trajectories from rectilinearity and deeply affect failure. Increasing crack tortuosity is connected to enhancement of fracture…
As a consequence of shearing, wing cracks can emerge from pre-existing fractures. The process involves the interaction of sliding of the existing fracture surfaces and the tensile material failure that creates wing cracks. This work devises…
The quasi-brittle nature of rocks challenges the basic assumptions of linear hydraulic fracture mechanics (LHFM): linear elastic fracture mechanics and smooth parallel plates lubrication fluid flow. We relax these hypotheses and investigate…
We model flow and transport in three-dimensional fracture networks with varying degrees of fracture-to-fracture aperture/permeability heterogeneity and network density to show how changes in these properties can cause the emergence of…
Material failure is mediated by the propagation of cracks, which in realistic 3D materials typically involve multiple coexisting fracture planes. Multiple fracture-plane interactions create poorly understood out-of-plane crack structures,…
This paper presents a computational framework for quasi-static brittle fracture in three dimensional solids. The paper set outs the theoretical basis for determining the initiation and direction of propagating cracks based on the concept of…
Transport properties of three-dimensional self-affine rough fractures are studied by means of an effective-medium analysis and numerical simulations using the Lattice-Boltzmann method. The numerical results show that the effective-medium…
Griffith's energetic criterion, or `energy balance', has for a century formed the basis for fracture mechanics; the energy flowing into a crack front is precisely balanced by the dissipation (fracture energy) at the front. If the crack…
The paper treats the propagation of a hydraulically driven crack. We explicitly write the local speed equation, which facilitates using the theory of propagating interfaces. It is shown that when neglecting the lag between the liquid front…
Using a two dimensional lattice model we investigate the crack growth under the influence of remote tensile forces as well as due to an internally applied pressure (hydraulic fracturing). For homogeneous elastic properties we present…
Understanding crack propagation in structures subjected to fluid loads is crucial in various engineering applications, ranging from underwater pipelines to aircraft components. This study investigates the dynamic response of structures,…
We report laboratory experiments and numerical simulations demonstrating that the anisotropic characteristics of rocks play a major role in the elongation of hydraulic fractures propagating in a plane perpendicular to bedding. Transverse…
We have studied the propagation of a crack front along the heterogeneous weak plane of a transparent poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) block using two different loading conditions: imposed constant velocity and creep relaxation. We have…
Miscible tracer dispersion measurements in transparent model fractures with different types of wall roughness are reported. The nature (Fickian or not) of dispersion is determined by studying variations of the mixing front as a function of…
Hydro-mechanical processes in rough fractures are highly non-linear and govern productivity and associated risks in a wide range of reservoir engineering problems. To enable high-resolution simulations of hydro-mechanical processes in…
A variational modeling framework for hydraulically induced fracturing of elastic-plastic solids is developed in the present work. The developed variational structure provides a global minimization problem. While fracture propagation is…