Characteristic Law of Borehole Deformation Induced by the Temperature Change in the Surrounding Rock of Deep Coalbed Methane Well

Abstract The borehole stability of the coalbed methane (CBM) well has always been vital in deep CBM exploration and development. The borehole instability of the deep CBM well is due to many complicated reasons. The change in the surrounding rock temperature is an important and easily overlooked factor among many reasons. In this research, we used methods that include experiment and numerical simulation to study the characteristic law of the borehole deformation induced by the changes in the surrounding rock temperature of deep CBM well. The experimental results of the stress–strain curves of five sets of experiments show that when the experimental temperature rises from 40 °C to 100 °C, the average stress when coal samples are broken gradually decreases from 81.09 MPa to 72.71 MPa. The proportion of plastic deformation in the entire deformation stage gradually increases from 7.8% to 25.7%. Moreover, the characteristics that some key mechanical parameters of coal samples change with the experimental temperature are fitted, and results show that as the experimental temperature rises from 40 °C to 100 °C, the compressive strength, elastic modulus, and main crack length of coal samples show a gradually decreasing trend. By contrast, Poisson’s ratio and primary fracture angle show a gradually increasing trend. Moreover, the relativity of the linear equations obtained by fitting is all close to 1, which can accurately reflect the corresponding change trend. Numerical simulation results show that a high temperature of the surrounding rock of the deep CBM well results in a high range of stress concentration on the coal seam borehole and high deformation.