The hydromechanical coupled numerical method in pseudo-3D axisymmetric domain with cracks extension and coalescence applies to the decompression failure problem

The stress-strain state of the saturated porous media determines the behavior of fracturing, which defines the efficiency of developing tight oil, shale, coalbed, and thermal energy fields. Therefore, reliable hydromechanical coupled simulations with destruction reconstruction are critical.

The proposed innovative simulator has a strong interrelation between fluid flow and rock deformation of porous media and realizes a fully coupled pseudo-transient numerical method by high-performance computing (HPC) tools. To increase the detail of the results in the problem, a finite difference numerical algorithm was implemented in the axisymmetric cylindrical domain, which reduces from three to two dimensions without loss of precision. Highly efficient parallelization using CUDA on the GPU computes meshes of up to one billion cells, allowing the simulation of a total core sample to sub-micrometer resolution in an appropriate time. The algorithm has been validated to find the exact solution to the cylinder problem. The proposed model accounts for cracks propagation with their coalescence within a single computational static grid, which keeps timing close to the continuous model.

This comprehensive implementation enables solving industrial problems, such as modeling core sample damage during rapid decompression. High-resolution simulations help reconstruct fracture propagation, analyze the initial stress state, and identify critical damage factors. The comparison with the exact solution to the cylinder problem confirmed the reliability of the algorithm. The calculation results show a strong dependence of decompression failure on the coalescence and elongation of cracks, influenced significantly by the rock's cohesion. Microcracks length and distribution play a decisive role in the decompressive destruction behavior of the rock sample. For the first time, the simulations demonstrated the decompressive destruction of a core sample during an uncontrolled, rapid core retrieval operation.