Numerical study of the impact of stress concentration on shale gas production

Predicting the production amounts has great significance for exploitation of oil and gas resources. The flow–geomechanical coupling effect plays an important role in predicting production. Shale rocks and the stress-dependent permeability model are critical for representing this coupling effect. The pore network of shale rock is not abundant like that of coal rock, and the matrix blocks of shale rock are not completely separated by the pore network. There is stress concentration around the pores when shale rock is deformed. Based on previous studies, the stress-dependent permeability model considering the impact of stress concentration is used in this study to build a numerical simulation model for flow–geomechanical coupling in a shale gas reservoir and validation using field data. Sensitivity studies are conducted to discuss the difference in production prediction between the new and common models. The main conclusions of this study are as follows: 1) The new model can fit both the field and experimental data well; the average error in daily production rate between the numerical solution and field data is 8%, which indicates that the new model can be used to predict shale gas production. 2) Under the geomechanical condition of a real reservoir, the difference in predicted production between models with and without stress concentration can be large and increase with the ratio of a to b. If this ratio is less than 50, the impact of stress concentration is not significant. Otherwise, the impact of stress concentration on production increases sharply and can exceed 20%. 3) The adsorption-induced strain enhances the impact of stress concentration on production. When the Langmuir pressure exceeds 1 MPa and Langmuir strain exceeds 0.01, the impact magnitude of stress concentration can exceed 10%.