6 Westergaard’s solution applied to Carbonate Reservoirs
6.1 Westergaard’s solution
6.1.1 Airy Stress Function
6.1.2 Displacement in the horizontal direction, u
6.1.3 Displacement in the ver
tical direction, v
6.2 Westergaard’s application for tectonic fractures
6.3 Westergaard’s solution applied to a limestone reservoir with tectonic fractures
6.3.1 Field geological aspects
6.3.2 Paleontological description
6.3.3 Petrography
6.3.4 Permeability and porosity
6.3.5 X-ray diffraction for the identification and analysis of carbonates rocks
6.3.6 Computed tomography, CT
6.3.7 Fluid Pore Pressure
6.4 Carbonate rock mechanical properties
6.4.1 Overburden stress, Sv
6.4.2 Maximum and minimum horizontal stresses magnitudes
6.4.3 Elastic parameters: Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio
6.5 Closed or open natural horizontal fractures
7 Applicability and benefits of doctoral thesis for hydrocarbons industry
8 Conclusions and recommendations
8.1 Conclusions
Recommendations
This thesis presents an important step towards a deeper understanding of naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs (NFCRs). It demonstrates the various kinds of discontinuities using geological evidence, mathematical kinematics model and computed tomography and uses this as a basis for proposing a new classification for NFCRs. Additionally, this study takes advantage of rock mechanics theory to illustrate how natural fractures can collapse due to fluid flow and pressure changes in the fractured media.
The explanations and mathematical modeling developed in this dissertation can be used as diagnostic tools to predict fluid velocity, fluid flow, tectonic fracture collapse, pressure behavior during reservoir depleting, considering stress-sensitive and non-stress-sensitive, with nonlinear terms in the diffusivity equation applied to NFCRs. Furthermore, the book presents the description of real reservoirs with their field data as the principal goal in the mathematical description of the realistic phenomenology of NFCRs.