Digital twin-driven nonplanar fracture reconstruction and evaluation in tight reservoirsOA

In tight oil reservoir development,hydraulic fracture morphology critically controls post-fracturing flow behavior.However,conventional microseismic monitoring remains limited in real-time characterization of nonplanar fracture geometry.This study proposes a digital twin-driven approach for nonplanar fracture reconstruction and evaluation,enabling real-time fracture characterization in tight reservoirs.The results show that:(1)the reconstructed fracture morphology achieved a normalized relative geometric error of only 3.33%when experimentally validated against high-resolution laser scanning in a true triaxial hydraulic fracturing test,and demonstrated a computational speedup exceeding 700 times compared to the discrete element method under identical experimental conditions and specimen geometry;(2)the reconstructed fracture networks capture nonplanar propagation and fracture–natural fracture interactions,indicating that fracture complexity is jointly controlled by tortuosity and connectivity when the horizontal stress difference is below 5 MPa,but dominated by connectivity when it exceeds 5 MPa;(3)real-time fracture reconstruction enables the identification of potential inter-stage fracture communication,allowing engineers to adjust injection volume and stage spacing to mitigate interference and improve stimulation efficiency.These results demonstrate the proposed digital twin functions both as a monitoring tool and an integrated platform for real-time fracture reconstruction,evaluation,and operational optimization in tight reservoirs.