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An Investigation Of The Control Of Hydraulic Fracturing Through The Inclusions Of Prefractures, William Joseph Kabeiseman

Doctoral Dissertations

"Among the methods for determining the in-situ state of stress within the earth’s crust, hydraulic fracturing has been and is receiving much attention. This method, in principle, measures stress directly with no delicate electronic equipment required nor knowledge of the elastic modulus of the material.

This dissertation investigates experimentally whether or not control of fracture orientation can be achieved by the introduction of circular and elliptical prefractures along with sand inclusions into cast hydrostone blocks which are hydraulically fractured. A mathematical model is presented and analytically solved for the stress condition associated with a circular crack containing fluid pressure with …