ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Georeservoirs
This article is part of the Research TopicNatural Fracture Characterization for Geoenergy ManagementView all 3 articles
Study on groundwater regime evolution in excavation damaged zone of an underground water-sealed petroleum storage caverns
Provisionally accepted
- 1Sinopec Engineering Incorporation, Chaoyang, China
- 2Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
- 3Architectural Design & Research Institute of Tsinghua University Co., Ltd., Beijng, China
- 4Institute of Geology and Geophysics Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- 5Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China
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Abstract :The excavation of underground engineering structures induces damage in the surrounding rock, resulting in the formation of an excavation damaged zone (EDZ) around the excavation profile. The evolving EDZ will induce the permeability alteration of surrounding rock mass and thus lead to the changing seepage field. In this paper, underground water-sealed petroleum storage caverns are taken as study objects, based on the measured fractures in field, random fracture networks simulation technique is used to study the initial permeability characteristics. In addition, the occurrence of EDZ and its evolution are studied. Combining the initial permeability with the EDZ induced permeability alteration, and the rainfall process considered, the 3D unsteady seepage field is analyzed numerically. Furthermore, water inflow into the cavern working face is predicted, and the influence of excavation on the groundwater table is examined. The results show that the simulation values of groundwater table agreed well with the monitored ones considering the effect of caverns excavation. As groundwater conditions are critical to the effectiveness and safety of petroleum storage, investigating the evolution of the groundwater regime during excavation is essential for optimizing construction sequencing and designing reliable water-sealing conditions during operation.
Keywords: EDZ, Fracture network, Groundwater regime evolution, Water inflow, Water-sealed petroleum storage caverns
Received: 12 Sep 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ya, Liu, Zou, Wang, Wang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaoli Liu
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