Using Fully Coupled Hydro-Geomechanical Numerical Test Bed to Study Reservoir Stimulation with Low Hydraulic Pressure

This paper documents our effort to use a fully coupled hydro-geomechanical numerical test bed to study using low hydraulic pressure to stimulate geothermal reservoirs with existing fracture network. In this low pressure stimulation strategy, fluid pressure is lower than the minimum in situ compressive stress, so the fractures are not completely open but permeability improvement can be achieved through shear dilation. We found that in this low pressure regime, the coupling between the fluid phase and the rock solid phase becomes very simple, and the numerical model can achieve a low computational cost. Using this modified model, we study the behavior of a single fracture and a random fracture network.

Data and Resources

Field Value
DOI 10.15121/1358112
accessLevel public
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identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/3017
issued 2012-01-31T07:00:00Z
landingPage https://gdr.openei.org/submissions/169
license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
modified 2017-05-23T21:36:27Z
programCode {019:006}
projectLead Eric Hass
projectNumber AID 19979
projectTitle Stimulation of Complex Fracture Systems in Low Pressure Reservoirs for Development of Enhanced Geothermal Systems
publisher Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • ckan
  • fracture
  • geo
  • geoss
  • geothermal
  • hydraulic-fracturing
  • hydraulic-shearing
  • low-pressure
  • national
  • north-america
  • reservoir-modeling
  • reservoir-stimulation
  • stimulation
  • united-states
isopen True
license_id cc-by
license_title Creative Commons Attribution
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maintainer Pengcheng Fu
maintainer_email fu4@llnl.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-21T17:57:02.535538
metadata_modified 2025-11-21T17:57:02.535542
notes This paper documents our effort to use a fully coupled hydro-geomechanical numerical test bed to study using low hydraulic pressure to stimulate geothermal reservoirs with existing fracture network. In this low pressure stimulation strategy, fluid pressure is lower than the minimum in situ compressive stress, so the fractures are not completely open but permeability improvement can be achieved through shear dilation. We found that in this low pressure regime, the coupling between the fluid phase and the rock solid phase becomes very simple, and the numerical model can achieve a low computational cost. Using this modified model, we study the behavior of a single fracture and a random fracture network.
num_resources 2
num_tags 16
title Using Fully Coupled Hydro-Geomechanical Numerical Test Bed to Study Reservoir Stimulation with Low Hydraulic Pressure