Multiscale Approach for Mechanical Characterization of Organic-Rich Shale and Its Application
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 19, Issue 1
Abstract
Mechanical behavior of organic-rich shale strongly influences the stimulation performance of hydraulic fracturing. This article presents an approach for the characterization and evaluation of mechanical properties of shale at different scales. Nanoindentation and modulus mapping were performed to measure the Young’s modulus and stiffness coefficients of the main constituents in shale at the mineral scale. The contact area of the nanoindentation on quartz is approximately 3.79 × 105 nm2, whereas the contact areas of modulus mapping are almost below 7.85 × 103 nm2. This comparison indicates that modulus mapping has higher resolution and is more suitable for the characterization of clay minerals. At the core scale, microindentation was applied to investigate the macroscopic properties. From the statistical analysis, we find that the quantity of the successful microindentation should be more than 70 to obtain effective results. In addition, an upscaling method was proposed to predict the macroscopic properties. Both of the predictions from the Mori-Tanaka (MT) model and the self-consistent method agree well with the microindentation results, but the results from the MT model show stronger anisotropy. Finally, we provided a new brittleness index (BI) and an example to estimate the mechanical properties along the well with the mineralogical logging data.
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Acknowledgments
This work was partially funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants U1663208 and 51520105005), the State Major Science and Technology Special Project of China during the 13th Five-Year Plan (Grants 2016ZX05037-003, 2016ZX05034-001-007, and 2016ZX05060), and the Science Foundation of Sinopec Group (Grant P16058).
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International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 19 • Issue 1 • January 2019
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© 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 7, 2017
Accepted: May 1, 2018
Published online: Oct 17, 2018
Published in print: Jan 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Mar 17, 2019
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