The Laplace-transform embedded discrete fracture model for flow simulation of stimulated reservoir volume

Hydraulic fracturing is a commonly adopted approach to enhance the production of unconventional reservoirs; however, the resulted complex fracture network increases the difficulty in the prediction of the flow behaviors. In this work, for the first time, we propose the Laplace-transform embedded discrete fracture model focusing on the simulation of fluid transport in simulated reservoir volume (SRV). The main hydraulic fracture is represented explicitly by the fracture segments referring to the recently developed simulation scheme, namely the embedded discrete fracture model. The equivalent model and multiple continua model are employed to characterize the fluid flow in SRV. The Laplace-transform finite-different method is used to numerically model the flow among unstimulated reservoir volume, SRV, and main hydraulic fracture with sufficient flexibility to characterize the arbitrary fracture/SRV geometries. As the solution is performed in Laplace domain, the backward Euler difference for time discretization is not necessary. Thus, the stability and convergence problems caused by time discretization are avoided. A series of numerical test cases are discussed to examine the performance of the proposed model. The simulation workflow is validated through the comparison with discrete fracture model and embedded discrete fracture model in real space. It is demonstrated that the proposed Laplace-transform embedded discrete fracture model is accurate for single flow with complex SRV distribution. On the basis of the Laplace-transform embedded discrete fracture model, we provided three applications of the new method: (1) analysis of the SRV effect on fluid flow behavior, (2) pressure transient analysis considering reservoir heterogeneity, (3) production performance analysis with time-varying production rate.