• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.838-846
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• 2007

A measurement system of tri-axial pressure was designed and constructed to measure permeability and resistivity under changing confining pressure. The system was designed to measure the permeability and resistivity of a core simultaneously, consisting of tri-axial supporting device and sets of dual-flow measurement. In this measurement system the permeability and resistivity of a sample can be directly measured and porosity can be obtained using Archie's laws. As for physical properties, artificial core samples are made from mixtures of standard commercial sand and mud of illite. In-situ sediment cores were sampled at the water-depth of 1,800m in the Ulleung Basin East Sea. In order to investigate the effects of confining pressure changes on physical properties, permeability and resistivity changes were monitored with increasing confining pressure. In this study, it was found that with the increase of confining pressure, permeability and porosity tend to decrease and resistivity tend to increase exponentially.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.233-244
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• 2017

We conducted hydraulic fracturing experiments on cement samples to investigate the dependency of fracture propagation on the viscosity of injection fluid and the in situ stress state. Ten cubic samples (20 cm side length) were produced using cement that was cured in water for more than one month. Samples were placed in a tri-axial compression apparatus with three independent principal stresses. An injection hole was drilled and the sample was hydraulically fractured under a constant injection rate. We measured injection pressures and acoustic emissions (AE) during the experiments, and investigated the fracture patterns produced by hydraulic fracturing. Breakdown pressures increased exponentially with increasing viscosity of the injection fluid. Fracture patterns were dependent on differential stress (i.e., the difference between the major and minor principal stresses). At low differential stress, multiple fractures oriented sub-parallel to the major principal stress axis propagated from the injection hole, and in some samples the fracture orientation changed during propagation. However, at high differential stress, a single fracture propagated parallel to the major principal stress axis. AE results show similar patterns. At low differential stress, AE source locations were more widespread than at high differential stress, consistent with the fracture pattern results. Our study suggests that hydraulic fracturing during shale gas extraction should be performed parallel to the orientation of minimum differential stress.