Fracture simulation is instrumental in the success of a range of technologies including CO2 sequestration, fracking, deep/difficult mining, and reservoir engineering; as well as civil, mechanical, and bio-engineering. I develop new computational methods to realistically model fractures in subsurface rocks, including the geomechanical simulation of fracture growth, the generation of topologically and geometrically robust fracture patterns, as well as modelling realistic aperture distributions and flow in fractured porous media. Deformation of the rocks is solved using the finite element method using tetrahedral meshes, which in the computational solid mechanics community constitutes a ‘non-orthodox’ method to compute energy concentrations around fracture tips. These energy concentrations, measured as stress intensity factors, are decomposed to predict mesh-independent direction and extent of growth. This research has resulted in the development of a proprietary geomechanics toolkit, developed in C++, which realistically models growth for a range of scales and scenarios.
Built With
- c++
- dynamic-geometry
- mac
- multithreading
- python
- windows
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