Impact of the tangential traction for radial hydraulic fracture

TL;DR

This paper investigates how tangential traction affects the behavior and modeling of radial hydraulic fractures, emphasizing energy release, asymptotics, and solver accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces an updated model incorporating tangential traction, analyzes its effects on fracture criteria, and evaluates solver effectiveness with new asymptotic approximations.

Findings

Tangential traction significantly influences fracture energy release rate.

Incorporating shear stress alters fracture system asymptotics.

First-term asymptotic approximation effectively simplifies parameter estimation.

Abstract

The radial (penny-shaped) model of hydraulic fracture is considered. The tangential traction on the fracture walls is incorporated, including an updated evaluation of the energy release rate (fracture criterion), system asymptotics and the need to account for stagnant zone formation near the injection point. The impact of incorporating the shear stress on the construction of solvers, and the effectiveness of approximating system parameters using the first term of the crack tip asymptotics, is discussed. A full quantitative investigation of the impact of tangential traction on solution is undertaken, utilizing an extremely effective (in-house build) adaptive time-space solver.