Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for Water-Foam Fracturing of Granite Rock

Dataset · Tue May 04 04:00:00 EDT 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.15121/1869425· OSTI ID:1869425

Thakor, Viren ^[1]; Ren, Fei; Wang, Hong

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1. Temple University

In addition to the foam data that were obtained from literature and that were collected from the current study, simulation data was also generated from finite element analysis (FEA) conducted in this study using COMSOL Multiphysics software. The FEA models were built to simulate the experiments conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on cement and granite samples. In these FEA models, temperature was kept at ambient while the pressure profile resembled the loading conditions during the ORNL experiments, where pressure was either monotonically increased or applied cyclically. The cement material was used as a model material and was used to study Von Mises stress and tensile stress distribution for different bore hole length geometry using a parametric sweep with water as fracturing fluid using solid-fluid interaction module. For the granite material, FEA models were developed for stress analysis of cylindrical samples with water or foam fluids. The solid mechanics module in COMSOL was implemented to solve for Von Mises stress and tensile stress. The fluid-structure interaction module was implemented to solve for water-foam interaction on granite cylinder with addition of fluid-loading on structure, i.e., large deformation in solid mechanics with no impact on fluid deformation. Foam was considered as a pseudo single-phase compressible fluid for which material properties were calculated from water and gas (nitrogen) phases. The density of foam is calculated as a function of the densities of water and nitrogen, while viscosity is a function of temperature. Four types of FEA analyses were modelled: 1. Monotonic injection with water 2. Monotonic injection with foam 3. Cyclic injection with water 4. Cyclic injection with foam All the COMSOL files are converted to a zip file which is save in .mph.

• Research Organization: DOE Geothermal Data Repository; Temple University
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Geothermal Technologies Program (EE-4G)
• Contributing Organization: Temple University
• OSTI ID: 1869425
• Report Number(s): 1382
• Availability: [e-mail]
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
COMSOL
EGS
Enhanced Geothermal System
FEA
Finite Element Analysis
Foam Fracturing
Granite
energy
foam
foam fracturing fluid
fracturing fluid
geothermal
model
simulation
solid mechanics