Generalized Solution for Double-Porosity Flow through a Graded Excavation Damaged Zone

Abstract

Prediction of flow to boreholes or excavations in fractured low-permeability rocks is important for resource extraction and disposal or sequestration activities. Analytical solutions for fluid pressure and flowrate, when available, are powerful, insightful, and efficient tools enabling parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification. A flexible porous media flow solution for arbitrary physical dimension is derived and extended to double porosity for converging radial flow when permeability and porosity decrease radially as a power law away from a borehole or opening. This distribution can arise from damage accumulation due to stress relief associated with drilling or mining. The single-porosity graded conductivity solution was initially found for heat conduction, the arbitrary dimension flow solution comes from hydrology, and the solution with both arbitrary dimension and graded permeability distribution appeared in reservoir engineering. These existing solutions are here combined and extended to two implementations of the double-porosity conceptual model, for both a simpler thin-film mass transfer and more physically realistic diffusion between fracture and matrix. This work presents a new specified-flowrate solution with wellbore storage for the simpler double-porosity model, and a new more physically realistic solution for any wellbore boundary condition. A new closed-form expression is derived for the matrix diffusion solution (applicable to both homogeneous and graded problems), improving on previous infinite series expressions.