Interaction between Crustal-Scale Darcy and Hydrofracture Fluid Transport: A Numerical Study

Figure 3

Snapshots of simulation results, in the form of maps of the pressure field. Movies of the model can be found in the supplementary material (available here). (a) Results for different diffusion coefficients. (b) Five steps of the simulation with , starting at a time where one hydrofracture reached the top of the model. Note how the initially sharp boundaries become increasingly fuzzy, as fluid flows (i.e., pressure diffuses) into the recently drained regions.