Impact of fracture coatings on fracture/matrix flow interactions in unsaturated, porous media

Groundwater flow in unsaturated, fractured rock is often assumed to be dominated by the porous matrix component. This is frequently the result of reasoning that water flowing in the fractures is rapidly imbibed into the rock matrix by capillary suction forces with negligible resistance to uptake at the fracture/matrix interface. However, the existence of a low-permeability mineralized layer or coating at this interface may substantially reduce matrix imbibition and could consequently result in fracture-dominated flow. To test this idea, four tuff samples containing natural fractures were obtained from tuff formations in southern Nevada. By performing imbibition experiments into the matrix rock, across a mineralized fracture face and then across a fresh uncoated fracture face, water uptake as a function of time and coating was measured. A model combining Darcy's law and the Washburn equation has been used to describe the imbibition behavior. Before testing the tuff samples, the experimental technique and imbibition model were first tested using ordered sphere packings with known pore size and structure. From the tuff imbibition data, the ratio of the permeability through the mineralized face to the permeability through the uncoated face was found to be 0.3 (relatively little effect of the mineralized layer) for two samples, 0.01 for one sample, and 10−7 (uptake strongly restricted by the mineralized layer) for one sample. Using a simple fracture flow model and the imbibition model mentioned above to simulate matrix uptake from the fracture, numerical simulations indicate that the existence of fracture coatings could significantly decrease the travel time and increase the travel depth of water flowing through fractures.