How to create a grid with complex hydraulic fracture network in Petrel
using Cartesian LGR
Hydraulic fracturing is widely used and simulation for this technique is also hot topic. Here is a workflow
to create a complex fracture network in Petrel using Cartesian LGR. The grid generated by this workflow
can be run in simulator such as ECLIPSE.
0. Pre-requisite
At the beginning, let’s assume you have already built a 3D grid and had you existing or proposed wells.
Any well type, vertical, horizontal, deviated is accepted for this workflow. In the example we will use a
horizontal well. Please refer to the Petrel project ‘hwellfrac.pet’.
1. Prepare fracture polygon
If we have the concept for the possible fractures distribution, we can use polygons to represent fractures
in 2D plane and then convert those into fracture plane in 3D. The fracture we will use in this example can
be seen in figure 1.
Figure 1. Top view of the fractures.
You can use polygon edit functionality to create and modify polygon you want. I suggest you keep each
line of the fracture in separate polygon because it’s easy for you to modify each of them in the future. You
can also import 2D polygon which are created from other application into Petrel.
Please create a folder and move all the polygons into it. We will use the folder as one entity next.
2. Create fracture surface
2.1 Run workflow “CreateFracturePlane”
In order to put 2D fractures in 3D grid, we need a special approach to do it. We use a special object fault
model. Some settings need to be modified before you run this workflow.
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In line 2, select the folder which contains all polygons using blue arrow. In line 4, select the folder to
receive the output result dealt by this workflow. This workflow will copy those polygons and move the
duplicates to a vertical distance called $fracHeight in line 6. Please note we use Z=Z-$fracHeight for this
calculation so the positive $fracHeight will move the duplicated polygons deeper and negative will go
opposite direction. The variable $fracHeight is assumed as the height of fracture but it can be manually
adjusted in the next step.
Figure 2. Settings for “CreateFracturePlane”.
Click run to execute the workflow. Then each polygon of fracture will be a pair of polygon, upper one and
lower one (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Polygon pairs of fracture.
2.2 Create fracture surface
Right click on each polygon (polygon pair after previous workflow) in you output folder. Select item
“Convert to fault in faults model…” in the popup menu. Then click Apply button to accept the default
conversion setting and close the window.
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Figure 4. Convert polygon to fault model.
Now you have all polygons converted into fault pillars in the fault model. You can view it in 3D window
(Figure 5).
Figure 5. Fracture represented by fault model.
Those fault pillars can be modified using “Edit fault model” in the Structural modeling tab (Figure 6). This
is a free and interesting step, you can make your own fracture structure based on this fault lines which
are converted from your input original polygons.
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Figure 6. Modify faults in 3D window using faults’ edit tools.
2.3 Make fractures surface.
After we get final structure of the “fault” fractures, Right click one fault node under faults node in your
fault model. Then select “Convert to fault surface” in the popup menu. Repeat for each faults (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Convert fault to surface
Now we have converted all 2D fracture polygons into 3D fracture surface. Those surfaces represent the
distribution of your hydraulic fractures for you target reservoir through this well (Figure 8). Please move
all your converted surfaces into a new folder.
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Figure 8. Fracture surfaces in 3D window.
3. Create fracture 3D grid
3.1 Create LGR region in 3D grid
After we have all the fracture surfaces , we can activate “Make Local Grid”, then select the folder with
your fracture surfaces as the LGR source. Input proper size of your LGR grid. This step will generate a LGR
set intersected by all fracture.
3.2 Run workflow “CreateFractureGrid”
In this step, we will sort out all LGR cells intersected by all fracture surfaces and set fracture properties
such as permeability, porosity for those cells.
Open settings for workflow “CreateFractureGrid” (Figure 9). Select the folder with your fracture surfaces
from previous step using blue arrow in line 6 (figure). This workflow creates a property named fracIndex.
The value equals to 1 stands for normal formation cells and 2 stands for the fractured formation cells.
Different geological property are specified according to fracIndex. We can set permeability and porosity
in line 1 and 2.
Figure 9. Settings for “CreateFractureGrid”.
Now we have a 3D grid with fractured grid (Figure 10) and the next step is to use it for simulation.
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Figure 10. 3D fracture grid model.
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