Modeling and Simulation Forum #14 Recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #14


"2021 Utah FORGE modeling summary and 2022 look ahead"

Presented by: Rob Podgorney (Idaho National Laboratory)

January 19 2021 at 11 am MST

Look back at the modeling and simulation efforts completed in 2021.

Looking ahead into 2022.

This is the 14th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is available for viewing.

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page

Modeling and Simulation Forum #13 Recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #13


"Impact of injection rate ramp-up on nucleation and arrest of dynamic fault slip"

Presented by: Federico Ciardo (ETH-Zurich)

December 15, 2021 at 11 am MST

Injection of fluid into the subsurface is a common operation in many industrial applications, such as wastewater disposal, hydraulic fracturing and deep geothermal energy exploitation. One of the drawbacks of these engineering applications is the generation of seismicity that in some severe cases might lead to a complete shutdown of operations.

The injection scenario, either in terms of pressure or volumetric rate, is one of the key controlling parameters for fluid induced seismicity. Numerous studies on the effects of injection parameters on earthquakes nucleation and occurrence along faults have been carried out. Most of them, however, assume idealized injection scenarios such as constant fluid over-pressure or constant injection volumetric rate.

In this contribution, we investigate extensively the effect of a finite ramp-up of injection rate, commonly present in many realistic injection protocols, on slip stability along a planar frictional weakening fault under plane-strain conditions (see Figure). We solve the coupled hydro-mechanical problem and investigate all the slip development regimes in the problem parametric space, including stable a-seismic slip, nucleation of a finite size dynamic event and nucleation of a run-way dynamic rupture.

FIGURE >>> Plane-strain fault model

Our results suggest that injection-induced seismicity can be mitigated by controlling the fault pressurization rate, in the limit when fluid diffusion time scale is lower than injection ramp-up time scale. Analytical derivations support our numerical results. The findings of this work can be useful for practical designing of injection operations in hydro-shearing type of stimulations.


 

This is the 12th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is available for viewing

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page

Modeling and Simulation Forum #12 Recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #12


"Hybrid fracture/matrix modeling for well completion options evaluation"

Presented by: Lynn Munday and Somayajulu L. N. Dhulipala (Idaho National Laboratory)

November 17, 2021 at 11 am MST

Orientation and completion for well pairs that have been subjected to multi-zonal stimulation play a critical role in the long-term performance of an Enhanced Geothermal Reservoir. Here we present the development of a methodology to rapidly and efficiently numerically simulate mixed fracture-matrix flow systems for evaluation of well design and completion options. The methodology is based on a loose coupling framework, allowing the fracture and matrix systems to be meshed separately. The fracture system includes the integration of fracture growth and aperture data from well stimulation simulations of stochastically generated fracture networks. Automatic mesh refinement is used in the matrix simulation to resolve heat transfer near the fracture network. This simulation framework is used to efficiently determine optimal production and injection well placement using adaptive sampling.

This is the 12th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is available for viewing

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page

Modeling and Simulation Forum #11 Recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #11


"Ground acceleration modeling from potential induced seismicity"

Presented by: Chandrakanth Bolisetti (Idaho National Laboratory)

October 20, 2021 at 11 am MDT

Ground motions generated by induced seismicity is an important consideration and design factor for the development of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) and operations. Typically, ground motions are estimated from empirically based ground motion prediction equations using a moment magnitude and a distance with factors to account for local site conditions and in some cases faulting style. Ground motions specific to a site, recorded or modeled, for the specific site conditions and fault geometries may better inform hazard and risk calculations. Here we demonstrate a deterministic calculation of ground motions from postulated moment magnitudes at the Utah FORGE site using source-to-site earthquake simulations using the finite-element method in the codes, FALCON and MASTODON, developed and maintained at the Idaho National Laboratory. Sample results are presented from these simulations and a plan for future work is discussed.

This is the 11th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is available for viewing.

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page

Modeling and Simulation Forum #10 Recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #10


"Utah FORGE site field update and well 16A(78)-32 stimulation modeling"

Presented by: Aleta Finnila(Golder), Branko Damjanac (Itasca), Pengju Xing (UofU)

September 15, 2021 at 11 am MDT

Join us to learn about current activities at the Utah FORGE site and progress of the first deep deviated well 16A(78)-32 stimulation modeling.

This is the 10th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is available for viewing.

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page

Modeling and Simulation Forum #9 Recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #9


"Microseismic monitoring and risk mitigation plan for the first Utah FORGE stimulations at the toe of 16A-32"

Presented by: Ben Dyer, Falko Bethmann (Geo-Energie Suisse)

August 18, 2021 at 11 am MDT

The injection well 16A-32, drilled at the Utah FORGE site towards the end of 2020 has a lateral section of ~4000ft that dips at around 30° and terminates at 8500ft at a temperature of ~240°C. Planned for later this year, a small number of stimulation tests at the toe of 16A-32 and will be monitored in real time by a deep microseismic network and large surface array. This forum will present the design of the deep monitoring network, the anticipated network performance and mitigation of seismic risks.

The deep network will consist of three established high temperature geophone strings and realtime processing software to derive event hypocentres and magnitude estimates. This primary network will be supplemented by behind casing and wireline DAS in the same monitoring hole together with a three level, 3 component fibre optic sensor string to evaluate the relative seismic performance of these less established systems. The aim is to process all of the data from the deep 3C geophone and fibre optic 3C sensor strings together with a subset of the DAS data in real time in order to monitor the data quality and synchronisation of these separate sensor systems, which will be a challenge due to large data volumes, different file formats and remote acquisition locations. For mitigation of seismic risk, processed data will be fed into a 'classical' traffic light system and an advanced traffic light scheme that incorporates lessons that have been learned from geothermal stimulations in Basel, Pohang and most recently from the Bedretto underground lab.

This is the 9th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is now available for viewing.

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page

Modeling and Simulation Forum #8 recording

Utah FORGE Modeling & Simulation Forum #8


"Utah FORGE DFN model file availability on GDR"

Presented by: Aleta Finnila (Golder)

July 21, 2021 at 11 am MDT

The initial 2019 Discrete Fracture Network (DFN) model developed for the Utah FORGE reservoir was based primarily on data from the vertical pilot well, 58-32, and outcrop data in the nearby mountain range. Updates to the DFN model have been made based on the incorporation of data from two newer wells in the reservoir, the highly deviated injection well, 16A(78)-32, and another deep vertical well, 56-32. This updated 2021 DFN model should be useful to modelers interested in having natural fracture sets for use in simulations such as well hydraulic stimulation, local stress evolution, flow pathway analysis, and thermal breakthrough in proposed injection and production well configurations. Various subsets of both the 2019 and 2021 DFN models are available on the public Geothermal Data Repository (GDR). This presentation highlights what Utah FORGE DFN files are available on the GDR and summarizes the main differences between the 2019 and 2021 models.

This is the 8th forum of the series and is intended to have an open format to present modeling and simulation, both completed and planned, as well as activities being conducted by the Utah FORGE Team.

This webinar has been recorded and is available for viewing.

To follow along with the slides, the pdf of the presentation is available for download HERE

For previous forums and for the upcoming schedule check out the Modeling and Simulation FORUM page