Simulating Hydraulic Fracturing and Contaminant
Transport with MATLAB® and COMSOL Multiphysics®
Software
D. W. Pepper 1, E. Nabizadeh1, J. Waters2
1University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA
2Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
Abstract
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique used to extract oil and gas in shale rock. A
mixture of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the well at high pressures to keep
the fissures open, which allows the gas to flow. Although intermediate casings are inserted
into the well to prevent the fracturing fluid or oil or gas from entering the water supply at
the ground water layer (between 1000 and 4000 feet), formed cracks can permit the
fracturing fluids and gas to spread into aquifers due to the increased permeability from
fracturing. In this study, a MATLAB® code is linked with the COMSOL Multiphysics®
software to trace the fracture propagation and examine the extent of contamination
associated with the fracking process.
The simulation domain for the hydraulic fracturing is 100m × 2000m. The pumping source
is at the bottom center element of the domain. Figure 1 shows the mesh refinement as the
pressure increases. The crack propagation evolves from using the mix mode stress criteria
to determine the propagation direction (MATLAB®). The crack opening is calculated
directly from the displacement field of the opposite nodes on the cracked element. If water
continues to be pumped for 24 hours, the fractured bond keeps increasing (COMSOL®).
This fracture can reach up to at least 1000 meters just within 24 hours, which can just
begin to reach the aquifer.
Once the crack reaches the groundwater layer, the time for the contamination to reach
the shallow groundwater layer is then calculated. The permeability is chosen to be
〖10〗^3 md and porosity is 0.35 for the groundwater layer. The simulation domain is
400m ×150m, and the contamination source is the rectangular element shown in Fig. 2,
along with subsequent dispersion results. The primary flow of the contamination is seen
to be dispersing into the shallow layer. It takes approximately 800 days to contaminate the
entire groundwater layer with the flowing gas or proppant used for the hydraulic
fracturing.
MATLAB® and COMSOL® are used to simulate hydraulic fracturing and contaminant
transport. The fracture volume is treated as porosity and permeability to be used in the
pressure equations, therefore no discontinuity is considered (MATLAB®). Results from this
preliminary study illustrate the implementation of COMSOL®, when linked with MATLAB®,
to accurately simulate hydraulic fracturing.
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Figures used in the abstract
Figure 1 : Mesh refinement.
Figure 2 : Contaminant transport and refinement after 100, 400, and 800 days.