Abstract: For reservoirs with high rock brittleness coefficient and uniform development of natural fractures, three basic modes are developed to characterize fracture network created by volume fracturing in horizontal wells. Flow from reservoir to wellbore is divided to two parts:reservoir flow and network flow. Principle of potential superposition is used to derive reservoir flow equation. Finitedifference method is adopted to establish flow equation within finite conductivity network. Star-Delta transformation is used to tackle interplay of flow between hydraulic and natural fractures. A comprehensive flow model is presented by coupling matrix equations of two flows. It indicates that as stimulated horizontal length is kept constant, effect of quantity of fracture stages and perforation clusters in each stage on production is more significant than that of half-length and flow conductivity of hydraulic fracture, which is, in turn, more dominant than that of density and flow conductivity of natural fractures. Finally, a field example shows that little difference exists between measured and calculated results.

Key words: volume fractured horizontal well, fracture network, quantitative characterization, Star-Delta transformation, coupled flow, productivity