Hydraulic fracturing modeling using the enriched numerical manifold method

•The numerical manifold method (NMM) is further developed to solve 2D rock hydraulic fracturing problems.•A “cubic law” is incorporated into the NMM for modeling fluid flow through fractures.•The asymptotic fracture-tip functions are used to enrich the global displacement function space of NMM.•The present results agree well with the existing experimental and analytical results.•The advantages of the NMM in discretization and accuracy are demonstrated. Recent attempts to solve rock mechanics problems using the numerical manifold method (NMM) have been regarded as fruitful. In this paper, a coupled hydro-mechanical (HM) model is incorporated into the enriched NMM to simulate fluid driven fracturing in rocks. In this HM model, a “cubic law” is employed to model fluid flow through fractures. Several benchmark problems are investigated to verify the coupled HM model. The simulation results agree well with the analytical and experimental results, indicating that the coupled HM model is able to simulate the hydraulic fracturing process reliably and correctly.