Abstract
The evaluation of propagation of seismic waves in fractured porous media is a critical endeavor in Earth Sciences and, hence, assessing attenuation and velocity dispersion through numerical solution of Biot’s equations of poroelasticity in the frequency-space is of large significance. The generation of meshes for fractured media using equi-dimensional representations, where fractures have a thin but finite apertures, remains one of the primary limitations in simulating seismic wave propagation in fractured media. Therefore, numerical methods based on hybrid-dimensional models, featuring the downscaling of fractures to lower dimensions as well as the use of suitable interface conditions, is fundamental for enabling the simulation of realistic fractured media. Drawing inspiration from the pertinent literature in Darcy flow simulations, interface conditions are usually based on the assumption of linear distributions of relevant fields across fractures. However, in the context of poroelasticity, linear approximations may not capture the full complexity of the solution of Biot’s equations, and require the introduction of correction terms to enhance the accuracy of numerical simulations. This work explores the nature and importance of interface conditions. In the context outlined above, it presents a formal derivation of corrected interface conditions from the analytical solution of Biot’s equations, and compares numerical results obtained with a linear approximation against the ones obtained with the corrected interface conditions. Numerical experiments conducted for a range of material properties emphasize the necessity of incorporating the correction terms for accurate simulations.