Numerical Analysis of Effect of Different Shapes of Pore on Tensile Crack Growth

Recent development in eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) opened new avenues thorough crack propagation problems. However, it ability to predict crack path in micro scale medium of a real porous rock is always questionable. In this work, numerical modeling of the effect of pore size on crack growth and comparison of the effect of different pore shapes and location has been developed using the finite element method to compare the maximum strength of reservoirs and complex rock models. The results showed that the equivalence of the main pores in the sample with simple geometric shapes such as circles, ellipses and angled shapes can well simulate the mechanical behavior of materials and crack growth in Phenomena such as hydraulic fracturing.