Abstract
Hydraulic fracturing is a well stimulation technique that makes the recoveries from the vast unconventional hydrocarbon resources in US economically feasible. Proppants are granular materials that are injected into hydraulic fractures to keep them open following a fracturing treatment. Hence, the proppant selection is of particular significance in petroleum industry. Due to recent advances in imaging technologies and high-performance computing, estimation of the elastic and transport properties of proppant packs at different closure stresses using imaged-based simulations is a credible alternative to direct experiments. In this study, transport properties (permeability and inertial flow parameter) of a ceramic proppant pack exposed to varying loading stresses are calculated using Lattice Boltzmann (LB) model simulations. The images of this packing shows rearrangement of the packing structure, embedding of the grains at the rock wall, and crushing of individual proppants. LB simulation results of this packing show that the permeability and inertial flow parameter are less sensitive to stress variations before crushing of the grains occurs.
