Effects of inflection curvature on flow interference at furcating fracture intersections

Understanding and quantifying the flow process at fracture intersections is critical for the accurate modeling of field-scale discrete fracture networks (DFNs) but remains challenging. Particularly, the geometric features of the inflection points inside the intersection are usually ignored, limiting insight into the flow behavior at the intersection. To fill this knowledge gap, the effect of the inflection curvature at intersections was investigated based on direct numerical simulations by solving Navier-Stokes equations. The inflection points at the intersection were classified as α and β, corresponding to the radii of curvature R_α and R_β, respectively. The effect of R_α, R_β on flow redistribution and head loss was systematically analyzed and the sensitivity to flow nonlinearity was determined by the Morris method. The results demonstrated that the inflection curvature of the intersection has a significant effect on head loss but a negligible effect on flow redistribution. With the increase of curvature radius, the flow nonlinearity caused by inflection β enhances and that caused by α diminishes. Nonlinear flow is more sensitive to variations in R_β than R_α. The effect of intersection geometry diminishes with the decrease of hydraulic gradient or the increase of distance from the intersection. Further, the critical distance of the intersection’s interference range was assessed by considering different indicators. The results can provide a reference for parameter selection and calculation simplification in DFN modeling.