**Acknowledgements**

The authors thank CSIRO for supporting this work and granting permission to publish.

### **Author details**

Xi Zhang1\* and Rob Jeffrey2\*

\*Address all correspondence to: xi.zhang@csiro.au

\*Address all correspondence to: rob.jeffrey@csiro.au


#### **References**

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**Author details**

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Xi Zhang1\* and Rob Jeffrey2\*

154 Effective and Sustainable Hydraulic Fracturing

\*Address all correspondence to: xi.zhang@csiro.au

\*Address all correspondence to: rob.jeffrey@csiro.au

1 CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, Melbourne, Australia

2 CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, Melbourne, Australia

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**Chapter 8**

**Hydraulic Fracture Propagation Across a Weak**

We investigated the problem of a hydraulic fracture propagation through a weakly cohesive frictional discontinuity for different conditions of fracture toughness, in situ stresses, fracture intersection angle, injection parameters and permeability of the pre-existing fracture. The parametric sensitivity of the fracture interaction process, in terms of crossing versus arresting of the hydraulic fracture at the discontinuity, was performed using numerical simulations through an extensive parameter space representative of hydraulic fracturing field conditions. The effect of the pre-existing fracture permeability on the crossing behavior was analyzed using a simple analytical model. We showed that the injection rate and viscosity of fracturing fluid are the key parameters controlling the crossing/non-crossing interaction behavior, in addition to already known fracture interaction angle and in-situ stress parameters. We have also found that the pre-existing fracture hydraulic aperture, when as large as that of the hydraulic fracture aperture, has significant influence on the interaction and may more likely

The main function of a hydraulic fracture (HF) treatment is to effectively increase reservoir permeability and drainage by creating one or more conductive fractures that connect to the wellbore [1-2]. The stimulation treatments are especially necessary in low-permeability unconventional source rocks such as shales, which are not economical without fracturing [3] and sometimes even subsequent refracturing [4]. The modeling of HF propagation is important

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© 2013 Chuprakov et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

**Discontinuity Controlled by Fluid Injection**

Dimitry Chuprakov, Olga Melchaeva and

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Romain Prioul

**Abstract**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55941

cause the hydraulic fracture to arrest.

**1. Introduction**
