Two-phase flow properties of a horizontal fracture: The effect of aperture distribution

• A method to model two-phase flow properties of horizontal fractures is developed.
• A method of generating fractal fractures with Gaussian distribution is presented.
• The effect of aperture distribution on two-phase flow properties is quantified.
• Empirical relationships between bmin, bmax and aperture distributions are proposed.

A systematic numerical method has been presented to investigate the constitutive relationships between two-phase flow properties of horizontal fractures and aperture distributions. Based on fractal geometry, single rough-walled fractures are generated numerically by modified successive random addition (SRA) method and then aperture distributions with truncated Gaussian distribution are formed by shear displacement between lower and upper surfaces. (The truncated Gaussian distribution is used to describe aperture evolution under different normal stresses.) According to the assumption of two-dimensional porous media and local parallel plate model, invasion percolation approach is employed to model the two-phase flow displacement (imbibition) in generated horizontal fractures, in which capillary forces are dominant over viscous and gravity forces. For truncated Gaussian distributions, constitutive relationships from numerical simulation are compared to closed-form relationships and a good agreement is obtained. The simulation results indicate strong phase interference with the sum of two phase relative permeability values being less than one in the intermediate saturations. It is found that fracture properties related to residual saturations depend on spatial correlation of aperture distributions. Based on the simulation results, we proposed an empirical relationship between the fracture residual-saturation-rated parameters and the corresponding aperture distributions.