Junchen Liu¹, Feng Zhou¹, Xiaofeng Lu¹, Xiaojin Zhou², Xianjun He¹, Yurou Du³, Fuguo Xia¹, Junfu Zhang⁴, Weiyi Luo^4,*

FDMP-Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, Vol.21, No.10, pp. 2613-2628, 2025, DOI:10.32604/fdmp.2025.069772 - 30 October 2025

Abstract In shale gas reservoir stimulation, proppants are essential for sustaining fracture conductivity. However, increasing closing stress causes proppants to embed into the rock matrix, leading to a progressive decline in fracture permeability and conductivity. Furthermore, rock creep contributes to long-term reductions in fracture performance. To elucidate the combined effects of proppant embedding and rock creep on sustained conductivity, this study conducted controlled experiments examining conductivity decay in propped fractures under varying closing stresses, explicitly accounting for both mechanisms. An embedded discrete fracture model was developed to simulate reservoir production under different conductivity decay scenarios, while… More >

Mao Jiang¹, Jianshu Wu¹, Chengyong Peng¹, Xuesong Xing¹, Yishan Lou^2,3, Yi Liu^2,3,*, Shanyong Liu^2,3

Energy Engineering, Vol.122, No.10, pp. 4019-4034, 2025, DOI:10.32604/ee.2025.067236 - 30 September 2025

Abstract Fracture conductivity is a key factor to determine the fracturing effect. Optimizing proppant particle size distribution is critical for ensuring efficient proppant placement within fractures. To address challenges associated with the low-permeability reservoirs in the Lufeng Oilfield of the South China Sea—including high heterogeneity, complex lithology, and suboptimal fracturing outcomes—JRC (Joint Roughness Coefficient) was employed to quantitatively characterize the lithological properties of the target formation. A CFD-DEM (Computational Fluid Dynamics-Discrete Element Method) two-way coupling approach was then utilized to construct a fracture channel model that simulates proppant transport dynamics. The proppant particle size under different… More >

Fan Yang^1,2,*, Honggang Mi^1,2, Jian Wu^1,2, Qi Yang^1,2

FDMP-Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, Vol.20, No.11, pp. 2637-2656, 2024, DOI:10.32604/fdmp.2024.048574 - 28 October 2024

Abstract The gas production of deep coalbed methane wells in Linxing-Shenfu block decreases rapidly, the water output is high, the supporting effect is poor, the effective supporting fracture size is limited, and the migration mechanism of proppant in deep coal reservoir is not clear at present. To investigate the migration behavior of proppants in complex fractures during the volume reconstruction of deep coal and rock reservoirs, an optimization test on the conductivity of low-density proppants and simulations of proppant migration in complex fractures of deep coal reservoirs were conducted. The study systematically analyzed the impact of… More >