On the limit for the size of hydraulic fractures near the earth's surface

✍ Scribed by H. Abé; H. Sekine; T. Ishino; Y. Kamata

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 192 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-2673
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00019642

✦ Synopsis

Mechanics of hydraulic fracturing is a great branch of the application of fracture mechanics theory, since hydraulic fracturing was considered as a technique for recovering geothermal energy from hot dry rocks. A substantial amount of geothermal energy could be extracted from hot dry rocks near the earth's surface by circulating water through crack-like hydraulic fractures.

Because of the low thermal conductivity of rock, relatively large fractures are necessary to gain an economically acceptable thermal energy rate.