(2015040) HYDRAULIC FRACTURING MODELING: PAST, PRESENT FUTURE
Modeling of hydraulic fracturing began after the early years of the first application of this technology. Since then, researchers have taken several modeling approaches and significant progresses are achieved in hydraulic fracture modeling. Developments are result of studying different complexities such as out of plane propagation, different problem scales, fluid flow, thermal stress etc. In addition to these complexities, uncertainty of the problem dictates the prediction of final fracture geometry before the real operation. Therefore, an effective modeling approach is needed to obtain a successful hydraulic fracture treatment. The objective of this study is to discuss the various approaches in hydraulic fracture modeling and present a review on history of hydraulic fracture model developments.
Simple 2D hydraulic fractures were among the early analytical models for prediction of fractures behavior. Inefficiency of these models for predicting fracture geometry in reservoirs with complex layers caused the development of so called P3D models. P3D short comes resulted in the development of fully 3D models with 2D fluid flow modeling capability. Several 3D models have been developed since then which include coupled fluid flow equations with fracture mechanics. Although 3D models gives more accurate results than other models, out of plane propagation was not considered in majority of them. They simply ignore the near-wellbore effects of deviated wells and assume a planar starting crack that has extended beyond this region. This problem was solved later using true 3D models.