APPLICATION OF A 2D EQUIVALENT CONTINUUM APPROACH TO THE ASSESMENT OF GEOLOGICAL FAULT REACTIVATION IN RESERVOIRS
Eleazar Cristian Mejia Sanchez1; Eliot Pezo Zegarra2; Maria Fernanda F Oliveira1; Deane Roehl2
1 Instituto Tecgraf/ Puc-Rio; 2 Pontifícia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro
doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2015-0880
Resumo
The reactivation of geological faults in oil and gas reservoirs may cause severe consequences as seismicity, well collapse and breach of seal integrity. During fluid production/injection, the stress state of the surrounding formation is modified, which may induce slippage and reactivation of preexisting faults. This paper presents the application of an equivalent continuum approach with the finite element method for the analysis of fault instability. The equivalent continuum formulation is based on the principle of deformation equivalence with Mohr-Coulomb criterion for rock and fault. Some synthetic models of a reservoir crossed by a fault were analyzed for several fault dip angles, for both injection and depletion cases. Results were compared with models that explicitly considered faults as interface elements. The studied methodology can be an attractive alternative to model fault reactivation in geomechanical problems.
Palavras-chave: Geological fault reactivation; Equivalent continuum model; Geomechanical analysis; Finite element model