The Impact of Contact Area and Fracture Surface Roughness on Fluid Flow in Fractured Reservoirs

Estimation of effective fracture permeability depends mainly on the geometry of the void space between the fracture surfaces. Sometimes, these void spaces are closed partially or totally due to different reasons, which create a contact area between the fracture surfaces. These contact areas causing the fluid to follow a tortuous path to flow around them which, reducing the permeability magnitude significantly.

In this study, a digitised fracture network of Kef Eddour formation has used to investigate the impact of contact areas and variable aperture width on the effective fracture permeability by using discrete fracture networks approach. Moreover, a statistical analysis of the fracture width has used to build a stochastic aperture distribution.

The results enable us to improve the fracture permeability estimation by considering the impact of contact areas, which results from (e.g., cementation, rock expansion).