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Nonlinear and non-local analytical solution for Darcy–Forchheimer flow through a deformable porous inclusion within a semi-infinite elastic medium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2021

Wei Zhang
Affiliation:
Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, 213A Hosler Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Amin Mehrabian*
Affiliation:
Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, Earth and Mineral Sciences Energy Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, 102 Hosler Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA
*
† Email address for correspondence: amin.mehrabian@psu.edu

Abstract

Permeability is a nonlinear and non-local function of the intimate coupling between pore fluid flow and solid deformation in porous media. A class of related problems involves the effect of fluid injection or withdrawal on the transport properties of geomaterials. This paper presents an analytical solution for the nonlinear and non-local problem of fluid flow through a disk-shaped porous elastic inclusion below the free surface of an elastic half-space. The solution accounts for the following nonlinear mechanisms: (i) variations in the permeability coefficient due to the flow-induced deformation of the inclusion; (ii) the inertial losses of the pore fluid flow. The former and latter mechanisms are formulated using the Green's function for a dilatation centre in an elastic half-space and the Darcy–Forchheimer equation for fluid flow through porous media, respectively. An analytical perturbation solution to the considered problem is developed and validated against the numerical finite element solution to the same problem. The described nonlinear mechanisms are represented by two dimensionless parameter groups. The extreme values of these dimensionless groups govern the solution asymptotic behaviours mimicking the special-case solutions in which either mechanism is forced to vanish. The applied aspects of the solution are demonstrated through the wellbore performance index parameter that quantifies the subsurface rock ability to deliver the pore fluid toward or away from a wellbore in a porous reservoir. Unlike the linear models, the presented nonlinear solution captures the observed dependence of the performance index on the wellbore flow rate.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Permeability variation due to coupled fluid flow and solid deformation in a confined porous medium.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Schematics of radial fluid flow through the porous inclusion in an elastic half-space.

Figure 2

Figure 3. The dimensions of the finite element model.

Figure 3

Figure 4. Numerical mesh for the finite element analysis in COMSOL® Multiphysics.

Figure 4

Table 1. The parameters of the base case study.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Comparison of the performance index calculated from the analytical and numerical solutions.

Figure 6

Figure 6. The sensitivity of the nonlinear performance index to the problem parameters: (a) shear modulus; (b) initial permeability; (c) Biot–Willis effective stress coefficient; (d) Poisson's ratio; (e) the inclusion depth; (f) permeability–strain correlation coefficients.

Figure 7

Figure 7. The schematics showing variations of the well performance index for a fluid injection–production cycle.

Figure 8

Figure 8. The effect of the parameters of Forchheimer flow on the well performance index. (a) Initial permeability; (b) porosity; (c) fluid viscosity; (d) fluid density. The solid curves denote $\Delta J$ during fluid production; the hollow circles denote $\Delta J$ during fluid injection; the dashed curves denote Reynolds number of fluid flow near the inclusion inner boundary during fluid injection or production.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Variations of $\Delta J$ versus flow rate for different values of the initial permeability and shear modulus: (a) initial permeability; (b) shear modulus.

Figure 10

Figure 10. Variations of $\Delta J$ versus initial permeability and shear modulus at a fixed well flow rate of 500 m3 day−1: (a) initial permeability; (b) shear modulus.

Figure 11

Table 2. Parameters of the case study with comparable effects of solid deformation and Forchheimer flow.

Figure 12

Figure 11. The profiles of the normalized, nonlinear proportion of pore fluid pressure, as well as the normalized nonlinear change in the inclusion permeability.

Figure 13

Figure 12. The distribution of normalized pressure deviation from the linear solution at the fixed flow rate of 500 m3 day−1: (a) $\Lambda = 935\,349$; (b) $\Lambda = 35\,076$; (c) $\Lambda = 5916$; (d) $\Lambda = 555$.

Figure 14

Figure 13. The schematics of a ring-shaped nucleus of strain in a semi-infinite domain.