An Experimental Method to Determine the Fracture Toughness of Brittle and Heterogeneous Material by Hydraulic Fracturing

In this paper, a method is proposed to determine the fracture toughness of brittle and heterogeneous material through hydraulic fracturing. The intent of the proposed method is to deploy it on materials whose are not easily determined by standard test. One example of such a material is hydrate-bearing sand, which is unstable under atmospheric pressure and temperature. The pressure-time record, injection flow rate and total volume injection are...