A semi-analytical correlation of thermal-hydraulic-mechanical behavior of fractures and its application to modeling reservoir scale cold water injection problems in enhanced geothermal reservoirs

In this work, we develop a novel correlation of the thermal-induced normal change of fracture aperture. The new correlation is based on the analytical solution of the governing displacement equations. Compared to the existing empirical correlations, the new correlation can better describe the physical processes by including the thermal effect on the matrix-fracture deformation. We have verified this correlation with respect to refined simulation results and implemented this correlation in a fully coupled massively parallel geothermal simulator, THM-EGS. We have applied this correlation to study field scale problems with certain parameters from Habanero Field in Copper Basin, Australia. Our results demonstrate that the fracture permeability near the cold water injector could be enhanced 7 times.