Experimental Study of the Fracture Geometry to Estimate the Fracture Conductivity of Ilam Formation for IRAN Reservoirs

فاقد چكيده فارسي

Fracture conductivity is an important parameter for designing a hydraulic fracture job. Since the flow rate in the fractures is too high, Darcy equation is not valid. The effect of non-Darcy flow in hydraulic fracturing process and optimum dimensions of the fracture plays a significant role in developing an equation to determine pressure drop in the fracture. Fracture geometry is an important parameter for establishing a correlation to determine fracture conductivity and inertial flow coefficient. In this paper, a new method was proposed to create a fracture with specific dimensions by means of placing steel sheets between formation rock samples. The fracture width variations under different closure stresses were calculated using two analytical equations. The conductivity of Ilam Formation was measured by a fracture conductivity measuring apparatus. The effects of fracture height and width were investigated on the fracture conductivity. Using the results of the experiment, a new correlation were developed to estimate fracture conductivity under closure stress. In addition, the conductivities obtained from the tests were compared with the cubic law. The results showed that the new correlation is more accurate than the cubic law.