Impact of fluid compressibility for plane strain hydraulic fractures

Growing interest in hydraulic fracturing (HF) using super-critical CO2 (SC-CO2) calls into question the typical HF modeling assumption whereby the fluid compressibility is neglected. This paper models a plane strain HF driven by compressible fracturing fluid including the influence of viscous fluid flow, crack propagation through the host rock, and fluid leakoff into the host rock. The results show that, contrary to a reasonable initial hypothesis that compressibility would be important, in expected real world conditions the fluid compressibility has little impact on fracture propagation.