After large-scale sand fracturing of horizontal wells in shale gas reservoir, fracturing fractures will deform in the production process. However, fracture deformation will lead to the decrease in fracture conductivity and then cause the decrease of gas well productivity. Therefore, in order to evaluate the fracturing fracture deformation mechanism of shale reservoirs, the shale proppant-supported fracture deformation evaluation experiments were carried out under different proppant types, particle sizes, sanding concentrations, and closure pressure conditions, respectively, and the variation curves of fracture width was calculated by a stereomicroscope under different experimental conditions. Then based on the experimental results, the fracture sensitivity factors and fracture deformation mechanism were analyzed, and the deformation mechanisms of fracturing fractures affected by proppant embedding and crushing were studied emphatically. The analysis results of fracture sensitivity factors indicate that the larger the particle size and hardness of proppant, the lower the sand concentration, proppant embedded on the shale rock surface. Moreover, the deeper the proppant is embedded, the faster the fracture conductivity decreases. In addition, the greater the closure pressure, the more serious is the proppant embedment, and the faster the fracture width decreases. The analysis results of fracture deformation mechanism show that, on the on hand, under variable closure pressure, the proppant with larger hardness and larger particle size is used for fracturing, and the proppant embedded in the fracture surface is the main cause of fracture deformation. However, if only the sand concentration of the proppant in the fracture is changed, the fracture deformation is jointly dominated by the embedding and crushing of the proppant. On the other hand, under constant closure pressure, the main mechanism of fracture deformation is that the proppant is embedded into the fracture surface when the closure pressure is low, but if the closure pressure is high, the main mechanism of fracture deformation is the crushing and compaction of proppant.

Based on dual-fractal theory, this paper proposes a novel methodology to transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements into relative permeability model, thereby realized the challenge of accurately quantifying multiphase fluid flow in dual-fractal porous media. The novel relative permeability model integrates a multitude of parameters associated with the microscopic pore architecture of porous media. It can be verified through case studies that the newly constructed relative permeability model demonstrates excellent applicability. Furthermore, we have discovered a correlation between the segmentation characteristics of the relationship between the pore radius (r) and transverse relaxation time (T2) in low-permeability sandstone reservoirs and the number of peaks in the NMR curve. Specifically, the single-peak type can usually be divided into two segments, while the multi-peak type can generally be divided into three segments. The comprehensive fractal dimension (Dc) derived from the weighting method effectively captures the holistic core heterogeneity. The characteristics of small diameter pores are particularly sensitive to variations in the pore tortuosity fractal dimension (Dτ), the pore structure fractal dimension (Df), Dc, and ε (represents the pore size ratios). Given that the wetting phase preferentially occupies small pores, its relative permeability is significantly affected by these parameter changes. Conversely, the non-wetting phase mainly flows through large pores and is thus less influenced by changes in these parameters.

In this work, the methane desorption isothermal curves at different water contents on deep sampled from Western Chongqing of China were measured at pressures up to 65 MPa and at 130°C by the volumetric method. In the first instance, the desorption increases with the decrease of pressure, the adsorbed gas desorbs slightly with decreasing pressures from 65 to 30 MPa. When the pressure drops to 30–20 MPa, the desorption rate increases rapidly with the decrease of pressure and the desorption curve begins to separate from the adsorption curve, resulting in desorption hysteresis. At last, when the pressure is lower than 20 MPa, the desorption increases almost linearly with the further decrease of pressure, but eventually there will be some adsorbed gas which cannot be desorbed to form residual adsorbed gas. After that, the isotherm desorption data of CH₄ was fitted using the improved desorption model. The fitting results showed that the improved desorption model can be used to describe the desorption process of deep shale gas containing water and has a strong applicability. In addition, the critical desorption pressure increases with increasing water content. When the water content is lower than 1%, the effect of the water content on the desorption of deep shale gas increases rapidly with increasing water content, as well as when the water content is greater than 1%, the impact changes slowly.