Simulation of Hydraulic Fracture Networks in Three Dimensions Utilizing Massively Parallel Computing Resources

Hydraulic fracturing has been an enabling technology for commercially stimulating fracture networks for over half of a century. It has become one of the most widespread technologies for engineering subsurface fracture systems. Despite the ubiquity of this technique in the field, understanding and prediction of the hydraulic induced propagation of the fracture network in realistic, heterogeneous reservoirs has been limited. Recent developments allowing the modeling of complex fracture propagation and advances in quantifying solution uncertainties, provide the possibility of capturing both the fracturing behavior and longer term permeability evolution of rock masses under hydraulic loading across both dynamic and viscosity dominated regimes. We present a framework for leveraging these advances in practical workflows for analyzing prospective and operating geothermal / hydrothermal sites. We will demonstrate the first phase of this effort through illustrations of fully three-dimensional, 2-way coupled hydromechanical simulations of hydraulically induced fracture network propagation and discuss preliminary results regarding the mechanisms by which fracture interactions and the accompanying changes to the stress field can lead to deleterious or beneficial changes to the fracture