From freezing-induced to injection-induced non-isothermal saturated porous media fracture

Summary

The focus of this contribution is laid on different aspects and instances related to porous media fracture under non-isothermal conditions. This includes the extreme case of fracturing due to pore-fluid freezing, where the micro-cryo-suction plays an important role in generating the required stresses for crack onset. This also includes studying the instances related to hydraulic fracturing and heat transfer under non-isothermal conditions. In all cases, the continuum mechanical modeling of the induced fractures is based on macroscopic porous media mechanics together with the phase-field method (PFM) for fracture modeling. For the micro-cryo-suction in saturated porous media, the water freezing is treated as a phase-change process. This is modeled using a different phase-field approach, in which the thermal energy derives the phase change and, thus, leads to the occurrence of micro-cryo-suction. Two numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed modeling frameworks.

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