Modeling dissociation of hydrate bearing sediments under shear

Abstract:

To assess the stability of ground during gas production from hydrate bearing sediments, it is of fundamental importance that the constitutive model employed and the computational procedure adopted are capable and accurate. One way to establish credence is to investigate if observation from laboratory tests could be reproduced in analysis. From this consideration, this study modeled laboratory triaxial tests in which hydrate dissociation was induced when a certain level of shear stress was reached. During the dissociation, however, both the axial and the confining stresses were kept unchanged. There were basically two scenarios observed: If the applied shear stress was higher than the shear strength of the hydrate free host soil, failure would take place during the dissociation; otherwise the sample would remain stable. The dissociation was induced either by a temperature raise or through pore pressure reduction. To model such tests, a coupled procedure was employed: the geomechanical analysis was conducted in FLAC3D, and the multiphase flow was conducted in TOUGH+. In this study, an SMP critical state constitutive model was implemented in the FLAC3D. This study successfully reproduced the observation from the laboratory tests. It showed that if the dissociation was caused by temperature change alone, failure would take place during dissociation. On the other hand, the modeling results also showed that if the dissociation was induced by pressure reduction, a sample could remain stable during dissociation because the effective confining stress was raised, but it would fail afterwards when the pre-association fluid pressure was allowed to return and the pace of hydrate reformation lagged behind.