Numerical simulation of fracturing in geological medium

Fracturing is the fundamental quality of real rocks, their most important characteristic, the subject of research and the source of information about the geological environment and oil and gas reservoir properties. Models and numerical methods for modeling fracturing zones in geological media, 3 ways to take into account the anisotropy of the geological environments, the model of infinity thin fractures and the conditions for its applicability, 5 types of computational meshes and their advantages in modeling wave processes into fracturing zones, 12 ways of explicitly revealing the structure of a fracturing zone and their differences from each other are discussed, structured and investigated in this paper. Also an example of fracturing modeling using grid characteristic method and a model of infinity thin fractures is considered. The effect of the source frequency on the seismic responses from fracturing zones is analyzed. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.