Deterministic Earth Mechanical Science

Deterministic Earth Mechanical Science is a landmark advancement in the natural sciences. It has extreme practical importance to subsurface engineering as well. All mechanical systems tend to progress from higher to lower energy. Three deterministic local mechanical energy minima have been found that correspond to the earth's three tectonic regimes. A specific equation matrix defines the minimum energy state for each of the earth's three tectonic regimes. All three matrices conserve [mass-energy] and [stress/strain]explicitly. Subsurface engineers can use these matrices to quantify risks and rewards of any particular mechanical decision that is being considered. Errors in drilling decisions costs that industry about one billion dollars a year. Deterministic earth mechanical science instead of forced-fit empiricism could cut drilling errors in half. The prediction of reservoir production could also be improved significantly.

Scientist-engineer’s biography Phil Holbrook received his Ph.D. in Geology from Penn State in 1973. His career in the oil industry involved exploration operations but mostly involved mathematically oriented research and development. He worked successively for Gulf Science and Technology 1973 and Exxon Production Research 1978. He joined Sperry-Sun Drilling Services in 1984 and began work on what is still the only mechanically representative pore pressure and fracture pressure prediction methodology. He developed, and successfully applied a computer program and methodology using over 300 wells in over a dozen basins worldwide. Earth mechanics is a force balanced constitutive mechanical theory that answers many questions including “How are stresses transmitted from the mantle to freshly deposited sediments through the earth’s sedimentary crust?” The answers are all closed-form minimum energy mathematical expressions. The “first fundamental in situ [stress/strain] relationship” is a scalar plastic (force and material) balanced relationship that involves yielding over near infinite time. It is average mineral specific. Thus the earth is found to have both absolute <2> and power-law symmetry.