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The coupling between solute spreading and mixing mechanisms and geomechanical processes, e.g. stress-induced fracture activation, has emerged as an important hydrogeological challenge due to its role in applications such as underground waste disposal, carbon sequestration, contaminant remediation, enhanced oil recovery, and tracer-based reservoir surveillance. Despite recent advances in modeling flow and geomechanics coupling, a holistic approach to capturing the synergy between fluid flow, solute transport, induced stresses, and fracture mechanics is lacking. This study investigates the rich interplay between these processes within a novel computational framework that is proposed to solve the coupled flow, transport, geomechanics, and fracture mechanics problem. Embedded Discrete Fracture Modeling (EDFM) is used to model the flow and transport processes in fractured porous media while an improved Bandis model is employed to capture the fracture-mechanical response to flow-induced stress perturbations. The role of transport-geomechanics coupling in modulating the spreading and miscibility of a solute slug during viscously unstable flows is examined. We investigate how flow-transport coupling, parameterized through the solute viscosity contrast and the fracture permeability, influences the stress state and fracture stability in the domain. A case study, inspired by a huff-n-puff tracer flowback study, is conducted to investigate the applicability of the proposed framework in the field. A sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the dependence of global transport characteristics, permeability evolution, and fracture stability on parameters dictating the strength of coupling between geomechanics, flow, and transport.

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