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Villamor Lora, Rafael

Civil Engineering

2015

MS

Given their potential applications for a number of engineering purposes, the geomechanics of shale reservoirs is becoming one of the most important issues in modern geomechanics. Borehole stability modeling, geophysics, shale oil and shale gas reservoirs, and underground storage of CO2 and nuclear waste are some of these potential applications to name a few. The growing interest in these reservoirs, as a source for hydrocarbons production, has resulted in an increasing demand for fundamental material property data. Laboratory analysis and constitutive models have shown that rock elastic and deformational properties are not single-value, well-defined parameters for a given rock. Finding suitable values for these parameters is of vital importance in many geomechanical applications. In this thesis an extensive experimental program to explore geomechanical properties of shale was developed. A series of triaxial tests were performed in order to evaluate the elasticity, yielding, and failure response of Marcellus shale specimens as a function of pressure, temperature, and bedding angle. Additional characterization includes mineralogy, porosity, and fabric. Rock samples used in this study came from three different locations and depths: one actual reservoir (~7,500 ft. deep), and two outcrops (~300 ft. and ~0 ft. deep).