Evolution of Friction and Permeability in a Propped Fracture under Shear

Figure 11

Evolution of (a) permeability, (b) normalized permeability (with respect to the initial permeability value), and (c) friction for the propped fracture during shearing for three different proppant sizes, namely, 40/80 mesh, 30/50 mesh, and 20/40 mesh with displacement; (d) particle size distributions of proppants both before and after shearing. The confining stress is 3 MPa for all cases.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)