XFEM simulation for Hydraulic Fracture Propagation in Saturated Porous Medium

Fracture initiation and propagation modelling of poroelastic medium has a vast practical application such as extraction of oil and natural gas by hydraulic fracturing, dam failure due to high fluid pressure and a lot more. This has led to an increased attention among the researchers to model fracturing in geomaterials. However, modelling this process in standard FEM is a challenging task as the rock deformation and pore fluid pressures are coupled, it involves a lot more degrees of freedom per node compared to a deformation analysis of dry rock. On the other hand, fracture propagation with standard finite element method is a highly computationally expensive technique, which involves the remeshing of the fracture domain after every time increment. This paper adopts the XFEM technique to study the effects of rock stiffness on the behaviour of fracture propagation in a saturated rocks mass, and the pore pressure variation in to the crack tip region. The finding shows a negative pore pressure distribution in to the fracture process zone, and increased length of fractures for stiffer rocks.