Study on Transport Law of Temporary Plugging Agent in Artificial Fractures of Hot Dry Rocks

In order to accurately capture the transport law of temporary plugging agent in artificial fractures during temporary plugging and fracturing of hot dry rocks, a mathematical model of transport of temporary plugging agent was established using the coupled method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method(DEM). The simulation results show that the key factors affecting the transport law include: the wall temperature of hot dry rock, the mass concentration of temporary plugging agent, and the flow pattern, but the friction coefficient between particles has little effect. When the temperature increases by 300 K, the average movement velocity of temporary plugging agent particles inside the artificial fractures increases by nearly 60%, and the interaction force between particles increases by more than 19.2 times. With the increase of mass concentration, the interaction force between particles will be larger. When turbulence occurs in the crack, the velocity and interaction force of temporary plugging agent particles increase sharply. © 2022, Science Press. All right reserved.