GENERATING FRACTURE NETWORKS USING ITERATED FUNCTION SYSTEMS

In order to model flow and transport in fractured rocks it is importan t to know the geometry of the fracture network. A stochastic approach is commonly used to generate a synthetic fracture network from the sta tistics measured at a natural fracture network. The approach presented herein is able to incorporate the structures found in a natural fract ure network into the synthetic fracture network. These synthetic fract ure networks are the images generated by Iterated Function Systems (IF S) as introduced by Barnsley (1988). The conditions these IFS have to fulfil to determine images resembling fracture networks and the effect s of their parameters on the images are discussed. It is possible to d efine the parameters of the IFS in order to generate some properties o f a fracture network. The image of an IFS consists of many single poin ts and has to be suitably processed for further use.