The investigation of mineralogical-petrographical, physical and mechani-cal properties affected on fracturing performance of magmatic rocks from Aksaray province

Hydraulic cracking applications have dramatically increased the production amounts of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas, and have changed the world energy balances. One of the uses of this technology is geothermal energy. In order to increase permeability in hot dry rock environments and to obtain hot water, hydraulic cracking applications have recently started to be tried. In this study, the effects of mineralogical, petrographic, physical and mechanical properties of the rocks on the hydraulic fractures to be made in the igneous rocks of Aksaray province were investigated. For this purpose, 5 different granite samples were taken from the study area and physical and mechanical properties were determined by performing standard rock mechanics experiments for each sample. In addition, mineralogical-petrographical properties were determined by chemical analysis and chemical compositions were determined by thin section analyzes. Water jet refers to a high-speed water beam obtained by forcing high-pressure water out of a narrow gap. In this study, it is considered that water jet can be used as an additional method in hydraulic cracking application and cracking experiments were carried out with water jet. Granite samples were exposed to pure water jet at high pressure for a certain period of time and the spreading width of water penetrated into the rock was recorded. Then, the relationship between rock properties and crack width in hydraulic cracking was investigated. In this way, rock properties which have the most effect on cracking performance were tried to be determined.