The combination of Rayleigh frequency shift distributed strain sensing (RFS-DSS) and pressure-gauge measurements has been reported recently in field applications. The main objective of the study detailed in the complete paper is to investigate the relationship between strain change and pressure change under various fractured reservoir conditions and provide guidelines for better using this novel strain/pressure relationship to estimate conductive fractures and pressure profiles.
Introduction
With a spatial resolution of 20 cm and a sensitivity of less than 1 με, RFS-DSS can measure mechanical strain changes along the fiber with higher accuracy and sensitivity than low-frequency distributed acoustic sensing measurements. The field applications of RFS‑DSS have improved the understanding of near‑well and far-field fracture characteristics and the relationship between stimulation and production in unconventional reservoirs.
Although some numerical modeling works have been conducted to study the mechanisms of RFS-DSS data sets, the sensitivity, or influencing factors, of the relationship between strain change and pressure change along the fiber are still unclear.
In this work, the authors use a coupled geomechanics and fluid-flow simulator to simulate the strain change and pressure change measured along the producing and monitoring wells during both stable production and shut-in periods.
Methodology
A 3D multilayer reservoir model with dimensions of 300×400×55.82 m was created using Permian Basin data sets. The reservoir was discretized into 553×129×5 gridblocks.
