Aperture and flow patterns in synthetic fractures with varying JRC for "On the tensorial nature of the hydraulic aperture of rough fractures"

This set contains aperture and fluid flow simulation data (pressure, pressure gradient, and velocity distributions) used for upscaling equivalent aperture tensors for eight samples of synthetic fractures with varying joint roughness coefficients (JRC) and varying contact areas. These data are part of the paper "On the tensorial nature of the hydraulic aperture of rough fractures".

Ferreira, C. A. S., Nick, H. M., 2024. On the tensorial nature of the hydraulic aperture of rough fractures. Journal of Hydrology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130645

The aperture data was generated through fractional Brownian motion by combining multiple steps of simplex noise. For that purpose, we used the Python library noise (https://github.com/caseman/noise). The fluid flow simulations were carried out with the academic, multi-institutional numerical framework CSMP++ (https://www.geoenergynumerics.com/software/open-csmp), developed in C++.

The mesh files in this dataset are in VTK format and may be read using the Python library meshio (https://github.com/nschloe/meshio). The files are named sample-{sample_name}_JRC-{JRC_value}_CA-{contact_area_value}_{property}.vtk. For each sample, namely F1-F8, and each contact area value (between 0.0 and 0.4), there are 7 VTK files. These are as follows:

• sample-{sample_name}_JRC-{JRC_value}_CA-{contact_area_value}_aperture.vtk: these files contain the aperture distribution, that is, the opening of the fractures, for each sample and each contact area value. The aperture values are stored in the center of the mesh cells and are constant for each cell.
• sample-{sample_name}_JRC-{JRC_value}_CA-{contact_area_value}_fluid-pressure-{#n}.vtk: these files contain the pressure distribution for problem number #n (1 or 2), for each sample and each contact area value. The pressure values are stored in the nodes of the mesh.
• sample-{sample_name}_JRC-{JRC_value}_CA-{contact_area_value}_fluid-pressure-gradient-{#n}.vtk: these files contain the pressure gradient distribution for problem number #n (1 or 2), for each sample and each contact area value. The pressure gradient values are derived from the nodal pressure values. Like aperture, they are stored in the center of the mesh cells and are constant for each cell.
• sample-{sample_name}_JRC-{JRC_value}_CA-{contact_area_value}_velocity-{#n}.vtk: these files contain the fluid velocity for problem number #n (1 or 2), for each sample and each contact area value. The velocity values are derived from the pressure gradient and the aperture values using the cubic law: velocity = (aperture^2/12*viscosity)*pressure_gradient. Like the aperture and pressure gradient, the velocity values are stored in the center of the mesh cells and are constant for each cell.

If you use this dataset in your work, include these citations:

Ferreira, C. A. S., Nick, H. M., 2024. On the tensorial nature of the hydraulic aperture of rough fractures. Journal of Hydrology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130645

Ferreira, C. A. S., Nick, H. M., 2023. Aperture and flow patterns in synthetic fractures with varying JRC for "On the tensorial nature of the hydraulic aperture of rough fractures". DTU Data. https://doi.org/10.11583/DTU.23586945.