Technical Papers and Presentations

Knowledge on flow behavior in fractured reservoir rocks is of great interest in petroleum engineering as well as for geothermal assets. Due to the big difference of magnitude (fracture aperture: ~?m, lateral extension of reservoirs ~km), modeling of discrete fracture flow is not practicable on the reservoir scale, so a Darcy (or Brinkman) approximation has to be found. The key task is to find proper permeability values for the different zones of the reservoir. The approach of the present study is to model discrete fracture flow in core samples to assess equivalent directional permeability values. The distribution of fractures in the core samples was assessed using ?CT with a resolution in the range of about ten to hundred ?m.