A program to calculate the state of stress in the vicinity of an inclined borehole through an anisotropic rock formation

Abstract

A borehole existing in any geologic formation concentrates the far-field tectonic and overburden stresses amplifying the magnitudes of certain stress components near the borehole. It is important to understand the magnitudes and patterns of this stress concentration because these lead to damage and can even collapse the borehole if sufficiently strong. The solution of the stress distributed near a borehole can be complicated considering the elastic anisotropy of rocks. We have developed programs (ASCIB3D) in MATLAB and Python to model the stress distribution around an inclined borehole in an arbitrarily oriented anisotropic medium. The program is built on the Lekhnitskij-Amadei solution. The input orientation of the far-field stresses and the elastic stiffness matrix of the medium into the program are geology angles instead of the rotation angles shown in previous studies, making the code more convenient for users. The sign convention for the inverse function, which is ignored in previous studies, is discussed in detail. The results indicate that the program ASCIB3D is a useful tool for modeling the stress distributed around an inclined borehole in the anisotropic formation and analyzing the effect of anisotropy and borehole inclination on stress distribution. The inclination and azimuth of the borehole and the anisotropy of the rocks affect the orientation and strength of the stress concentration.