Investigations on thermally-induced and gas-pressure driven fractures in rock salt

authored by: Lennart Siemann, Bastian Leuger, Dirk Zapf
Abstract: During the last decades the importance as well as the number of gas storage caverns in rock salt to store natural gas, compressed air or hydrogen have increased. Especially during the last years, research on the storage of compressed air and hydrogen gained importance in order to increase the storage capacity of renewable energies. While withdrawing gas, the temperature within caverns decreases. This can cause tensile stress development at the cavern wall. Since the tensile strength of rock salt is relatively low, tensile stresses are likely to induce cracks. The gas penetrates into the fractures and may lead to further propagation. It is currently subject of research to investigate the process of thermally-induced and gas-pressure driven fracturing as part of safety assessment of gas storage caverns. The question to be answered is, if fracturing occurs, how far do cracks penetrate into the surrounding rock salt. In this paper the theoretical approaches of thermally-induced and gas-pressure driven fracture propagation which are used for the geomechanical, numerical calculations for rock mechanical dimensioning of gas storage caverns in rock salt are presented. Additionally, numerical results of fracture propagation in rock salt are described and discussed.
Organisation(s): Institute of Geotechnical Engineering
Type: Paper
Publication date: 23.06.2019
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Geochemistry and Petrology, Geophysics
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
Electronic version(s): https://onepetro.org/ARMAUSRMS/proceedings-abstract/ARMA19/All-ARMA19/ARMA-2019-0124/124588?redirectedFrom=PDF (Access: Closed)