Wellbore Stability School – Introduction to GEOSTRESS

GLOSSARY

Brittle model or behavior – Material behavior where a rock breaks (or cannot carry any
stress) after its stress reaches a certain level.

Cohesion (Co)
Cohesion (Co) is the intercept on the shear stress axis of a straight-line Mohr-
Coulomb envelope. In physics, cohesion is described as ‘the force that holds together
molecules or like particles within a substance’. Easier to make grains slide path each
other than to crush them
When rocks fail in compression they fail in shear as result of inter-granular slip.
Resistance to shear is shear strength – due to a combination of cohesion and friction
between rock grains.

Effective stress – A defined stress, which is defined in terms of the total stress and pore
pressure, that makes computations simpler by removing the pore pressure from the
governing equations. Examples, the Terzaghi effective stress, σ = s – p for models of
shear and tensile failure; the Biot effective stress, σ’ = s - αp for models that are
concerned with volume changes, α is defined in terms of rock properties.

Elastic behavior, models, etc. – Material behavior or models that are 3-D
generalizations of the 1-D mechanical behavior of a spring. Simple model of a solid
in which the solid’s shape and internal stresses are always the same for the same set of
applied loads. A linear elastic model is one in which all stresses and strains are
linearly related.

Equilibrium – The fundamental concept in mechanics that the sum of all forces acting
on a stationary body is zero.

Failure criteria – A combination of effective (Terzaghi) stresses that define the ultimate
strength of a material. Also called Failure Conditions or Yield Conditions. These are
attempts to generalize the strength behavior of rocks measured in simple laboratory
tests to the complex 3-D conditions in the real-world. The different criteria with
different names (e.g., Mohr Coulomb, Drucker Prager, Stassi d’Alia, Lade) use
slightly different ways of generalizing these conditions.

Friction Angle (FANG) φ

The general Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion is given by:
τ = Co + σ1 tan φ
where φ is the internal friction angle.

Hoop stress – The stress around a wellbore wall. This stress is higher than the in situ
stresses because of stress concentrations that develop because of the presence of a
wellbore.
Mohr’s circle – A geometric construction that allow one to easily see how coordinate
system changes affect stress components.

Normal stress – Stress component that acts perpendicular to a surface.

Plastic behavior or model – Material behavior where a rock deforms at a constant stress
level and does not return to its original shape once the stress is reduced.

Poisson’s ratio – An elastic property that affects the stresses or strains in a material in
directions other than the direction of loading.

Shear stress – Stress component that acts parallel to a surface. The maximum shear
stress equals one-half of the difference between the maximum and minimum principal
stresses.

Stress – The generalization of the forces acting on individual particles to the internal
forces acting throughout a continuous body.

Stress invariants – Specific values or combinations of stress components that do not

change when the coordinate system changes, e.g. principal stresses, octahedral shear
stress.

Stress ratio – Defined by the abbreviation ko or km is the ratio of the horizontal to the
vertical effective stress. Sometimes called the matrix stress ratio.

Tectonics – Loading condition in which lateral loads are actively applied to a sediment
(in contrast to the “normal” condition where lateral loads develop passively because of
constraints against lateral deformations). Tectonics can be caused globally continental
drift forces or locally by salt bodies or down-slope movements.

Total stress – The fundamental stress that controls equilibrium.

Triaxial test – Rock mechanics test in which a cylindrical rock sample is tested where
the radial stress (confining pressure), axial stress, and pore pressure are controlled
independently.

Uniaxial strain – Terminology for condition in which strains occur only in one direction
(typically vertical).

Workhardening or strainhardening behavior or model – Material behavior where

increasing stresses are needed to deform a rock but the rock does not return to its
original shape once the stress is reduced.
 Wellbore Stability School – Introduction to GEOSTRESS
EQUATIONS SUMMARY

Effective-stress definitions:
• In general an effective stress, σ or σ’, equals the total stress, s, minus some factor
times the pore pressure, p. CAVEATS: there are no standard symbol conventions
for effective and total stresses and whether compression is positive, so be careful
how each author defines and uses them. In addition, there is no such thing as the
“one, true effective stress” as some like to ascribe to the Biot effective stress.
Effective stresses are defined for our convenience so that one can write basic
governing equations so that pressure does not appear as an explicit variable.
• The Terzaghi effective stress, σ = s – p, is used to define shear and tensile failure
conditions.
• The Biot effective stress, σ’ = s - αp, where α = 1 – K/Ks and K is the material
bulk modulus and Ks is the material’s constituent’s bulk modulus. Do you see a
potential problem here if K is not constant? Regardless, Biot effective stress is
used to define conditions with volume changes.

Principal stresses:
• There is always one coordinate system in which the only normal stresses act on
the faces of a cube aligned with that coordinate system, i.e., there are no shear
stresses in this coordinate system. These normal stresses are called the principal
stresses.
• By convention, principal stresses are typically subscripted with numbers 1, 2, & 3,
e.g., s1, s2, s3, σ1, σ2, and σ3; and s1 > s2 > s3
• The maximum shear stress that exists (in some other coordinate system), τmax =
(s1 – s3)/2

Stress invariants (combinations of stresses that are independent of the coordinate

system used to solve a problem). These invariants apply to both total and effective
stresses:
• First invariant: I1 = σ1 + σ2 +σ3 = σx + σy +σz
• Mean stress: σm = I1/3
• Second invariant of the deviatoric stresses, J2:

J2 =
1
6
[ ]
(σ x − σ y )2 + (σ x − σ z )2 + (σ z − σ y )2 + τ xy2 + τ xz2 + τ zy2
3
= τ 02
2
• The octahedral shear stress, τ0, or the root mean square of the principal stress
differences. Expressed in terms of the principal stresses:

τ0 =
1
3
[
(σ 1 − σ 2 )2 + (σ 3 − σ 2 )2 + (σ 1 − σ 3 )2 ]
 • The third invariant: I3:

σ x τ xy τ xz
I 3 = τ xy σ y τ yz
τ xz τ yz σ z
= σ 1σ 2σ 3
Note here the symbols “| |” means the determinate of the matrix included within
the symbols.

Failure criteria (combinations of stresses that define when a material – rock in our
case – fails or starts to deform a large amount for a small increase in stress):

Mohr-Coulomb:

σ max = σ min
(1 + sin φ ) + 2c cos φ
(1 − sin φ ) (1 − sin φ )
Here c and φ are material properties.

Drucker-Prager:

J 2 = Mσ m + N , where
2 3 sin φ 2 3c cos φ
M = , and N =
3 − sin φ 3 − sin φ

Stassi d’Alia:

J 2 = 2 (UCS − TS )σ m + 2 ⋅ UCS ⋅ TS
Here the UCS is normally termed the unconfined compressive strength but is sometimes
termed the uniaxial compressive strength, and TS is the tensile strength. Note that
Statoil, which normally uses this criterion always sets TS = 0.

Modified Lade:

*1 I 1*
I3 3
=
27 + η
3

Here I1* and I3* are the first and third stress invariants calculated with a modified
effective stress, σ* = σ +c/tanφ, and η is a material property related to c and φ as
follows

4 tan 2 φ (9 − 7 sin φ )
η=
1 − sin φ
Interrelationships between various strength parameters:

The interrelationships between all of the parameters have all been defined in the
equations above with the exception of the UCS and TS, which follow:
2c cos φ
UCS = , and
1 − sin φ
2c cos φ
TS =
1 + sin φ

Note that TS is still often arbitrarily set equal to zero by some users regardless of the
value of c and φ.

The interrelationships between these variables are derived by forcing all of the failure
criteria to agree with each other when the intermediate equals minimum principal
stress. Differences in the criteria arise in the way they account for the importance of
the intermediate principal stress. The latest thinking is that both the Lade and the
Mohr-Coulomb seem to do a better job of capturing the importance of σ2. The Lade
criterion has the advantage of being written so that one does not have to know in
advance which principal stress directions will be either the maximum, intermediate, or
minimum as one does to evaluate the Mohr Coulomb criterion.