Assessment of stress-induced evolution of permeability tensor in rock mass containing discrete fracture network

The work presented in this paper is focused on the assessment of equivalent permeability, and its stress-induced evolution, in fractured rock mass. A procedure is proposed for specifying the eigenvectors/eigenvalues of permeability tensor based on the notion of a fabric tensor. The approach involves a series of mesoscale simulations of fluid flow for a given discrete fracture network and determining the best-fit approximation to the spatial …