FRACTAL DESCRIPTION OF ROCK FRACTURE BEHAVIOR

The quantitative evaluation of the rock fracture behavior is an important and complicated problem in the unconventional oil and gas resource exploitation. Based on the existing core experiment data, considering the lithology and the rock fracture fractal characteristics, a quantitative relationship between the fracture fractal dimension, the compressive strength and the surface density is established. The fractal dimensions of three fracturing cores are calculayed using the developed software, and it is shown that the more complex the fracture, the larger the fractal dimension. So the fractal dimension can be used as a factor to evaluate the fracture behavior. This method is simple, intuitive, and convenient for engineering applications.