A transient fictitious stress boundary element method for porothermoelastic media

The development of an indirect transient boundary element method for porothermoelastic media is described. Specifically, the fictitious stress method is extended to non-isothermal poroelasticity to solve coupled porothermoelastic problems. The fundamental solutions and numerical procedures are described and an application is presented. In particular, the model is used to study the stress and pore pressure distributions around a wellbore drilled in hot rock. There is good agreement between the numerical predictions and analytical results. The analysis is useful for determining the conditions for wellbore failure while drilling as well as for calculating the classical fracture initiation pressure for hydraulic fracturing. The results indicate that the transient formulation of the fictitious stress method is an accurate and suitable means for solving problems in porothermoelasticity. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.