Articles

In this page you will find some of the published articles of Geomechanics Corner in PDF format.

The Delicate Matter of Rock Brittleness

A Primer on the Geomechanics behind Fracturing Pressure Curves

Bitumen Spill Canada

Ethics of Geomechanics; A Thriving Discipline and Its Growing Responsibility

Have you ever tried to define something that you have spent a good part of your life on understanding and exploring its details in just one short sentence? If you have, you can understand that it is not an easy job because you need to be abstract and complete simultaneously. Last time that I tried to find an inclusive while simple definition for geomechanics (and everything it deals with) I ended up with this sentence: "Geomechanics studies the mechanical response of rocks to the events that disturb their initial state." The main three elements of this definition are: (i) An 'initial state' defined by in-situ stresses and ambient pore pressure and temperature. (ii) A 'disturbing event' that can be either natural (i.e., tectonic movement, magma flow, fluid flow, hydrocarbon generation, etc.) or human-induced (examples from petroleum industry are drilling, completion, fracturing, production and injection and thermal operations), and (iii) Rock's response to the disturbance: how it deforms (constitutive behaviour models) and how it fails (failure criterion) when initial state changes. Almost all the work done in all different geomechanical studies are about characterizing these three elements though sometimes it may seem difficult to identify them separately as they are usually intertwined.