Examples range from natural fractures, such as magma-driven vertical dyke formation in the earth’s crust and underwater crack formation and failure in dams, to induced fractures for industrial purposes, such as rock mass preconditioning for cave inducement in mining and waste disposal of drill cuttings. This research theme focuses on developing reliable numerical models and tools for simulating hydraulic fracture, which is now being widely used to extract natural shale gas, with eventual goals to guide the natural gas industry and inform regulatory authorities of the risks inherent in hydraulic fracturing.
References
- Zhang, X., Sloan, S.W., Vignes, C. & Sheng, D. A modification of the phase-field model for mixed mode crack propagation in rock-like materials. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 322, 123-136 (2017).
- Zhang, X., Vignes, C., Sloan, S.W. & Sheng, D. Numerical evaluation of the phase-field model for brittle fracture with emphasis on the length scale. Computational Mechanics 59, 737-752 (2017)
- Ni, L., Zhang, X., Zou, L. & Huang, J. Phase-field modeling of hydraulic fracture network propagation in poroelastic rocks. Computational Geosciences 24, 1767-1782 (2020).
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