Preliminary Study of 2D Fracture Upscaling of Geothermal Rock Using IFS Fractal Model

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 739; no. 1; pp. 12095 - 12103
• Main Authors: Tobing, Prana F. L, Feranie, Selly, Latief, Fourier D. E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.08.2016
• Subjects: Fractal geometry; Fractal models; Fractals; Fractures; Iterative methods; Parameters; Physics; Similarity; Two dimensional models
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/739/1/012095

Fractured rock plays important role in reservoir production. In larger scale, fractures are more likely to be heterogeneous and considered to be fractal in its nature. One of the characteristics of fractal structure is the scale independence. An investigation of fractal properties on natural fractured rock is therefore needed for modelling larger fracture. We have investigated the possibilities of fractal upscaling method to produce a larger geothermal fracture model based on smaller fracture data. We generate Iterated Function System (IFS) fractal model using parameters e.g. scale factor, angle between branch, initial line direction, and branch thickness. All the model parameters are obtained from smaller fracture data. We generate higher iteration model to be compared with larger geothermal fracture. The similarity between the IFS fractal model and natural fracture is measured by 2D box counting fractal dimension (D). The fractal dimension of first to fourth generation fractal model is (1.86 ± 0.02). The fractal dimension of the reference geothermal site is (1.86 ± 0.04). Besides of D, we found significant similarity of fracture parameters there are intensity and density between fracture model and natural fracture. Based on these result, we conclude that fractal upscaling using IFS fractal model is potential to model larger scale of 2D fracture.