Consulting: Petroleum
High-Energy Gas Fracturing
Contact forces showing the loading of particles due to explosive detonation down a borehole
Explosive and propellant-assisted fracturing is used to increase porosity and production. However, due to the complexity of the detonation and deflagration process, outcomes may be unpredictable, sometime leading to loss of porosity due to residual compressive stresses resulting from crushing and compaction. Itasca Consulting Group offers software and engineering expertise in the simulation of coupled fluid flow through formations represented either as continuum, complex networks of fractures, or large assemblies of bonded particles.
Crushed zone and radial fractures developing around a 75-mm blast hole
Modeling crushing and fracturing caused by explosive gas flow
Developing on its PFC2D/PFC3D software which simulates rocks as a large assembly of bonded cylindrical or spherical particles, Itasca has developed techniques and software tools that allow for the simulation of the complex subsonic or supersonic gas flow through fractures and the resulting fracturing and crushing of the rock.
Axisymmetric view of stress evolution following charge detonation.
P-waves propagate along spherical fronts followed by planar shear waves
References
Ruest, M., P. Cundall, A. Guest and G. Chitombo (2006) "Developments Using the Particle Flow Code to Simulate Rock Fragmentation by Condensed Phase Explosives." In FRAGBLAST - 8 (8th International Symposia on Rock Fragmentation by Blasting, Santiago, Chile). Pp. 140-151. Santiago: Editec.
