Abstract

A robust understanding of the thermal stress development due to injection of cold fluids is crucial when developing the Åsgard field on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) offshore Norway. To get a better and more direct estimation of the stress reduction, a series of triaxial tests under uniaxial strain control were conducted with cooling on reservoir core samples. The purpose of the testing program was to find elastic properties, thermal expansion coefficients and change in confining stress due to temperature reduction. The results show that the cooling related stress effect is strongly stress path dependent. As the sample is subjected to more cooling the stress state tends to approach an elasto-plastic formulation leading to a more soft response of the material. As a consequence the measured stress effect is lower than the estimated which was based on elastic state assumptions.

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