Experimental and theoretical study on the effect of unsteady flow on the fracturing pressure in hydraulic fracturing test

Mingze Liu (), Guang Zhang, Guogang Gou, Bing Bai, Shaobin Hu and Xiaochun Li
Additional contact information
Mingze Liu: Wuhan University of Technology
Guang Zhang: Wuhan University of Technology
Guogang Gou: Changsha Engineering and Research Institute Ltd. of Nonferrous Metallurgy
Bing Bai: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shaobin Hu: Hohai University
Xiaochun Li: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2018, vol. 90, issue 3, No 5, 1137-1151

Abstract: Abstract Reasonable determination of formation fracturing pressure concerns the stable operation of underground fluid injection projects. In this work, we studied the effect of unsteady flow on fracturing pressure. Hydraulic fracturing tests on low permeable sandstone were conducted with the injection rate between 0.1 and 2.0 ml/min. Then, the fracturing pressure prediction models for hollow cylinder under both unsteady flow and steady flow conditions were deduced. Finally, the effect of unsteady flow on the fracturing pressure was studied based on the experimental result and several influence factors. It was shown that fracturing pressure increased with the elevated pressurization rate in the tests, while the slope of the variation curve decreases. The model considering unsteady flow can reflect the variation tendency of fracturing pressures in experiments, while fracturing pressures from the model considering steady flow are invariant with different pressurization rates. Fracturing pressure decreases with the elevated rock permeability and increases with the elevated fluid viscosity, and these two effects are actually generated by the unsteady flow. Whether to consider the unsteady flow has no significant influence on the effect of rock tensile strength on fracturing pressure when the tensile strength is very low. However, when the tensile strength is high, the effect of unsteady flow cannot be neglected.

Keywords: Fracturing pressure; Hydraulic fracturing; Unsteady flow; Fluid injection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-017-3088-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:90:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11069-017-3088-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-017-3088-8

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().