Stimulation of gas or oil shales by hydraulic fracturing requires injecting water at a very high rate into kilometre-long boreholes, in order to induce sufficient fracture width to place the proppant. Since such high rate of injection implies flow in the turbulent regime, heavy-molecular-weight polymers are added to water to reduce drag and thus drastically lessen the energy required for pumping. Lecampion & Zia ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 880, 2019, pp. 514–550) explore via modelling how the rheology of slickwater – water with a small amount of drag-reducing agents – affects the propagation of a hydraulic fracture. Theoretical models in combination with scaling arguments and numerical simulations indicate that flow in a radial fracture is inherently laminar, with the turbulent regime restricted at most to the first few minutes of injection, for plausible values of rock and fluid parameters and the injection rate.

中文翻译：

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页岩滑溜水水力压裂

通过水力压裂增产气或油页岩需要以非常高的速度将水注入数公里长的钻孔中，以产生足够的裂缝宽度以放置支撑剂。由于如此高的注入速率意味着在湍流状态下流动，因此将重分子量聚合物添加到水中以减少阻力，从而大大减少泵送所需的能量。Lecampion 和 Zia（J. Fluid Mech.，第 880 卷，2019 年，第 514-550 页）通过模拟滑溜水（含有少量减阻剂的水）的流变学如何影响水力压裂的扩展。理论模型结合比例参数和数值模拟表明径向裂缝中的流动本质上是层流，湍流状态最多限制在注入的前几分钟，