A Poromechanics-Based Framework for Fully Coupled Reactive Transport and Geomechanics in Porous Rocks
Abstract
Mineral precipitation and dissolution in rocks alter pore structure, stress, and hydraulic properties, producing tightly coupled chemo-hydro-mechanical processes that are central to subsurface systems. Yet, existing continuum-scale simulators lack a generalizable, mathematically tractable, and physically grounded chemo-mechanics formulation for modeling these coupled processes. To address this gap, this work presents a poromechanics-based framework for chemo-mechanics coupling and integrates it into coupled reactive transport and geomechanics simulations. Building upon classical poromechanics theory, the framework provides distinct descriptions for the stress states of the host rock and pore minerals, in addition to pore fluid pressure, enabling a rigorous and flexible treatment of their individual behavior and mechanical interactions during precipitation and dissolution. As demonstrated by numerical examples, the poromechanics-based method captures the expected mechanical response by translating pore-scale mineral growth into mineralization pressure. By accounting for mineral compressibility, the method also supports more physically realistic representations of deformation and induced stress. Numerical comparisons further highlight the unique capability of the poromechanics-based approach to model effective stress evolution and fracture development without explicitly representing pore geometry or other microstructural features. Overall, this framework offers a versatile, physics-based predictive approach to modeling coupled chemo-mechanical processes in reactive porous rocks and supports future reservoir-scale analyses of engineered subsurface systems.
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BibTeX
@misc{fei2026poromechanicsbased,
title = {{A Poromechanics-Based Framework for Fully Coupled Reactive Transport and Geomechanics in Porous Rocks}},
author = {Fan Fei and Yifan Yang and Aleksander Zibitsker and Giuseppe Buscarnera and Randolph Settgast and Kari Finstad and Giovanna Bucci},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.00310},
eprint = {2608.00310},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.00310},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Poromechanics-Based Framework for Fully Coupled Reactive Transport and Geomechanics in Porous Rocks
AU - Fan Fei
AU - Yifan Yang
AU - Aleksander Zibitsker
AU - Giuseppe Buscarnera
AU - Randolph Settgast
AU - Kari Finstad
AU - Giovanna Bucci
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.00310
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.00310
AB - Mineral precipitation and dissolution in rocks alter pore structure, stress, and hydraulic properties, producing tightly coupled chemo-hydro-mechanical processes that are central to subsurface systems. Yet, existing continuum-scale simulators lack a generalizable, mathematically tractable, and physically grounded chemo-mechanics formulation for modeling these coupled processes. To address this gap, this work presents a poromechanics-based framework for chemo-mechanics coupling and integrates it into coupled reactive transport and geomechanics simulations. Building upon classical poromechanics theory, the framework provides distinct descriptions for the stress states of the host rock and pore minerals, in addition to pore fluid pressure, enabling a rigorous and flexible treatment of their individual behavior and mechanical interactions during precipitation and dissolution. As demonstrated by numerical examples, the poromechanics-based method captures the expected mechanical response by translating pore-scale mineral growth into mineralization pressure. By accounting for mineral compressibility, the method also supports more physically realistic representations of deformation and induced stress. Numerical comparisons further highlight the unique capability of the poromechanics-based approach to model effective stress evolution and fracture development without explicitly representing pore geometry or other microstructural features. Overall, this framework offers a versatile, physics-based predictive approach to modeling coupled chemo-mechanical processes in reactive porous rocks and supports future reservoir-scale analyses of engineered subsurface systems.
ER -