Stress perturbation around a fault by hydraulic fracturing

In this paper we present an exact closed-form solution for the stress perturbation around a fault in a half plane induced by nearby multiple hydraulic cracks. First, we apply the complex potential function method to find the stress field induced by a concentrated displacement discontinuity in a two-dimensional half plane. Then we integrate the fundamental stress field along the crack to find the corresponding field due to a crack with finite length. Method of superposition is simply applied to obtain the corresponding solution due to multiple cracks. Finally, as numerical examples, we apply our exact closed-form solution to a couple of cases to investigate the effect of hydraulic fracturing on the stress field around the fault under different in-situ stress conditions. Particularly, the normal and shear stresses along the fault line are calculated. By applying the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion to the fault, the critical distances between cracks and fault are estimated with and without the in-situ stress ...