Smart proppant concept for monitoring hydraulic fractures
Arcady Dyskin A , Elena Pasternak A , Greg Sevel A and Rachel Cardell-Oliver AUWA
The APPEA Journal 51(1) 527-534 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ10036
Published: 2011
Abstract
Monitoring subsurface fluid flow is important in mapping hydraulic fractures and identifying flow channels in reservoirs. A new monitoring technique is proposed whereby fluid is injected with smart actuators capable of organising their pulses to create a combined output with a higher proportion of energy at low frequencies. Ideally, the best results occur when actuators are sequentialised so each next actuator emits its pulse immediately after the previous actuator. The low frequency energy content achieved using sequentialisation is much higher than that achieved with a random distribution of pulses, but is relatively insensitive to practical errors in scheduling and irregular attenuations of amplitudes. Simulations show that actuators can be self-organised into a sequential state by monitoring other actuators’ pulses using the algorithm presented in this paper.
Arcady Dyskin is a Winthrop Professor at School of Civil and Resource Engineering. Arcady graduated in 1975 from Moscow Oil and Gas Institute, and in 1980 from Moscow State University. In 1986 he obtained PhD in Mechanics of Solids from The Institute for Problems in Mechanics, USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1991 he joined the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Western Australia. His areas of expertise include topological interlocking, rock mechanics, fracture mechanics, multiscale modelling and fluid flow monitoring. arcady@civil.uwa.edu.au |
Elena Pasternak is a professor at the School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering of the University of Western Australia. She received PhD in 2002 from the University of Western Australia. She was a Humboldt Fellow at Technical University of Clausthal, Germany and an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Western Australia. Her research interests include mechanics of generalised continua, fracture mechanics, topological interlocking and fluid flow monitoring. elena@mech.uwa.edu.au |
Greg Sevel graduated from the University of Western Australia in 2009 with Bachelors degrees in engineering (hons) and computer science. He is now working in the oil and gas industry for Baker Hughes. gregsevel@iinet.net.au |
Rachel Cardell-Oliver is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Western Australia. She has a PhD in protocol verification from the University of Cambridge, UK and a Masters in distributed systems from the University of Western Australia. Her research interests include designing and building wireless sensor networks, query languages and protocols for sensor networks, formal methods for distributed systems, software engineering, software testing and computing education. Member: IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). rachel.cardell-oliver@uwa.edu.au |
