Fluid Flow complexity in a Rough Fracture Using a Complex Aperture Network

A complex aperture network approach in association with a finite element analysis of fluid flow within a rock joint is developed. The rock joint is under shear stress while at the same time, different cases of fluid flow rate are employed. With using a correlation measure over the recorded apertures and velocity fields (calculated by a finite element approach), the main characteristics of the revealed complex networks are evaluated. The mean geodesic length and joint degree distribution through parallel profiles with the shear direction shows the impressive scaling with the hydraulic conductivity of the fracture. The revealed hubs based on analysis of two point correlation and spectrum of laplacian of the complex aperture networks confirm the importance of a few main groups to conduct the main flow volume over the dynamical aperture field.