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Borehole Breakout Method

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Rock Stress and Its Measurement

Abstract

Spalling of the walls of boreholes or wellbores due to stress concentration produces elongated intervals with non-circular crosssections whose long axes share common average direction. Such intervals are defined as breakouts or breakout zones when the shorter diameter of the borehole corresponds to, or is close to, the diameter of the drillbit. The orientation of the major and minor horizontal in situ stresses around a vertical borehole can be inferred from the orientation of breakouts as it is usually assumed that breakouts occur in two diametrically opposed zones along the direction of the minimum horizontal in situ stress (Fig. 8.1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

    Bernard Amadei (Professor)

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ove Stephansson (Professor)

Authors
  1. Bernard Amadei
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  2. Ove Stephansson
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Amadei, B., Stephansson, O. (1997). Borehole Breakout Method. In: Rock Stress and Its Measurement. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5346-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5346-1_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6247-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-5346-1

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