• Juan Michael Sargado, Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre, Technical University Of Denmark
• Michael Welch, Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre, Technical University of Denmark
• Inga Berre, Department of Mathematics, University of Bergen

Modeling the evolution of fractures in the subsurface has become a major research area in recent years, both as a purely mechanical process and as part of a wider multiphysics context. This is in large part due to the emergence of new technologies and the increased interest in applications such as unconventional hydrocarbon extraction, engineered geothermal systems, and carbon capture and storage. Understanding how fractures evolve (i.e. the initiation, propagation and arrest of cracks) and how they interact with concurrent external processes is important for determining the safety and operating characteristics of the above-mentioned systems. Nevertheless, a very accurate description of both the crack network and the fracturing process is often challenging and sometimes even prohibitive, owing to the disparity of length scales associated with fracture apertures and the overall domain of interest, as well as the sheer number of cracks that must be considered for some applications. To circumvent this difficulty, upscaling techniques can sometimes be employed according to the specific needs of a given problem with regard to fracture resolution.

The aim of this minisymposium is to bring together researchers working on the simulation of subsurface fracture network evolution in various levels of detail, as well as its effective multiphysics coupling. Interested participants are invited to submit contributions dealing on the aforementioned subject matter, which include but are not limited to the following subtopics:

—Discrete/sharp crack techniques
—Variational phase-field and damage-based approaches
—Coupled thermal, chemical and hydromechanical processes
—Subcritical fracture and fatigue in rocks
—Dynamic phenomena such fracture-induced seismicity
—Novel discretization/solution schemes and software implementation