IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v512y2018icp27-37.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effective aperture and orientation of fractal fracture network

Author

Listed:
  • Zhu, Jianting

Abstract

Distribution of fracture length has been shown to exhibit fractal characteristics. In this study, we proposed a new idea of effective fracture in terms of aperture and orientation for a fractal fracture network and developed solutions of effective aperture in relation to fractal characteristics, flow behavior and hydraulic gradient. Another main point is that the use of Darcy’s law is not required. The effective fracture approach takes into account the scenario that the entire fractal fracture network may effectively behave similarly to a bundle of fractures where flows may be non-linear. The effective fracture approach explicitly distinguishes laminar and turbulent flows based on the size of effective fracture. To do so, an iterative procedure is developed to determine the effective fracture aperture. Results demonstrate that the effective aperture only slightly varies with hydraulic gradient, which illustrates that the idea of effective aperture can be used in the mixture of laminar and turbulent flows. The effective aperture decreases with the scaling exponent, increases linearly with the maximum fracture length, increases significantly with the minimum over maximum fracture length ratio, and increases with the scaling coefficient. The effective orientation shows expected decrease as the precision parameter of the fracture orientation increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhu, Jianting, 2018. "Effective aperture and orientation of fractal fracture network," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 512(C), pages 27-37.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:512:y:2018:i:c:p:27-37
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2018.08.037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437118309579
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2018.08.037?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xu, Peng & Yu, Boming & Qiu, Shuxia & Cai, Jianchao, 2008. "An analysis of the radial flow in the heterogeneous porous media based on fractal and constructal tree networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(26), pages 6471-6483.
    2. Kou, Jianlong & Chen, Yanyan & Zhou, Xiaoyan & Lu, Hangjun & Wu, Fengmin & Fan, Jintu, 2014. "Optimal structure of tree-like branching networks for fluid flow," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 393(C), pages 527-534.
    3. C. E. Renshaw & J. C. Park, 1997. "Effect of mechanical interactions on the scaling of fracture length and aperture," Nature, Nature, vol. 386(6624), pages 482-484, April.
    4. Miguel, Antonio F., 2015. "Fluid flow in a porous tree-shaped network: Optimal design and extension of Hess–Murray’s law," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 423(C), pages 61-71.
    5. Xu, Peng & Yu, Boming & Feng, Yongjin & Liu, Yanjun, 2006. "Analysis of permeability for the fractal-like tree network by parallel and series models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 369(2), pages 884-894.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhu, Jianting, 2020. "Coupling effect of power-law fluid properties and scaled fractal characteristics on flow through fractured media," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 559(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kurian, Varghese & Narasimhan, Sridharakumar, 2023. "Analysis of potential flow networks: Variations in transport time with discrete, continuous, and selfish operation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 632(P1).
    2. Zhu, Jianting, 2020. "Coupling effect of power-law fluid properties and scaled fractal characteristics on flow through fractured media," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 559(C).
    3. He, Ziqiang & Yan, Yunfei & Zhang, Zhien, 2021. "Thermal management and temperature uniformity enhancement of electronic devices by micro heat sinks: A review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    4. Agson-Gani, Putra H. & Zueter, Ahmad F. & Xu, Minghan & Ghoreishi-Madiseh, Seyed Ali & Kurnia, Jundika C. & Sasmito, Agus P., 2022. "Thermal and hydraulic analysis of a novel double-pipe geothermal heat exchanger with a controlled fractured zone at the well bottom," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:512:y:2018:i:c:p:27-37. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.