Study on the Shadow Effect of the Stress Field around a Deep-Hole Hydraulic-Fracturing Top-Cutting Borehole and Process Optimization

The clean utilization and green development of coal resources have become a research focus in recent years. Underground hydraulic fracturing technology in coal mines has been widely used in roof pressure relief, top coal pre-splitting, gas drainage, roadway pressure relief and goaf disaster prevention. Different in situ stress types cause great differences in the stress field around the boreholes, the critical pressure of the fracture initiation, and the direction of the fracture expansion trend; in addition, the stress shadow effect generated by the superposition of stress fields between boreholes relatively close together has a mutual coupling effect on the evolution of the stress field, the development of the plastic zone, and the crack propagation of the rock mass. Therefore, an effective method to solve the problem is to establish a mechanical model of hydraulic fracturing in boreholes for theoretical calculation, determine the influence mechanism of the crack shadow effect, and design a numerical simulation experiment of the equivalent stress fluid-solid coupling of hydraulic fracturing under different pore diameters and spacings. In addition, combining rock mechanics and fracture mechanics to analyze the influence of the shadow effect of the stress field between cracks on the evolution of the equivalent stress and the plastic zone is one of the important advances in this paper. Considering the engineering background of the site, the geological conditions and the requirements of general regulations, it is considered that the parameter selection of roof fracturing hydraulic fracturing technology in the Yushen mining area is more suitable when 0.12 m hole diameter and 3.5 m hole spacing are selected.

Automated summary

The clean utilization and green development of coal resources have become a research focus in recent years. Underground hydraulic fracturing technology in coal mines has been widely used in various applications. The stress field and fracture expansion trend are greatly influenced by the in situ stress types and stress shadow effect between boreholes. Therefore, establishing a mechanical model and conducting numerical simulations are effective methods to study these effects. One important advance of this paper is the analysis of the shadow effect on the evolution of the stress field and plastic zone using rock mechanics and fracture mechanics. Based on the engineering background and geological conditions, a suitable parameter selection for hydraulic fracturing in the Yushen mining area is suggested.