Evolution of Friction and Permeability in a Propped Fracture under Shear

Figure 6

Evolution of (a) permeability, (b) normalized permeability (with respect to the initial permeability value), and (c) friction for the propped fracture during shearing under three different normal stresses of 1 MPa, 3 MPa, and 5 MPa with displacement; (d) particle size distributions of proppants after experiments: at 1 MPa, grain size distribution before and after testing does not change much; thus the distribution at 1 MPa is representative of the virgin particle distribution (i.e., 40/80 mesh).

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)