Conforming Delaunay Triangulation of Stochastically Generated Three Dimensional Discrete Fracture Networks: A Feature Rejection Algorithm for Meshing Strategy

Stochastic modeling of flow and conservative transport in threedimensional discrete fracture networks

“…numerous models that are based on the DFN approach to model the flow or transport in fractured formations (Cacas et al, 1990a;Cacas et al, 1990b;de Dreuzy et al, 2013;Hyman et al, 2015a;Liu and Neretnieks, 2006;Long et al, 1985;Pichot et al, 2012;Xu and Dowd, 2010). Advanced 3D DFN approaches typically include procedures of fracture generation, DFN meshing, and flow and transport or particle tracking (de Dreuzy et al, 2013;Erhel et al, 2009;Hyman et al, 2014;Pichot et al, 2012;Xu and Dowd, 2010;Zhang, 2015). Particle tracking algorithms are usually preferred to simulate DFN transport 5 and have recently been widely implemented to evaluate the time resistance of contaminants for fractured formations (Hyman et al, 2015a;Hyman et al, 2015b;Makedonska et al, 2015;Painter et al, 2008;Stalgorova and Babadagli, 2015;Wang and Cardenas, 2015).…”

“…Over the years, many studies have focused on developing flow and transport models and integrating DFN simulation workflows for 3D fracture networks (Hyman et al, 2014;Hyman et al, 2015a;Lee and Ni, 2015). Specifically, the DFN transport was mainly modeled based on Lagrangian approaches such as particle tracking and random walk algorithms (e.g., 15 Makedonska et al, 2015;Painter et al, 2008;Stalgorova and Babadagli, 2015;Wang and Cardenas, 2015) .…”

The Virtual Element Method for Discrete Fracture Network Flow and Transport Simulations

“…In this work we recall some results concerning the application of the Virtual Element Method [4,3,2] to the steady state simulation of the flow in DFNs [1,22,27,30,24,32,23,15,16,17,18,19,9,10,8,13]. In this approach we can exploit the flexibility of VEM in order to tackle the geometrical complexity.…”

“…In this approach we can exploit the flexibility of VEM in order to tackle the geometrical complexity. Indeed, a crucial issue in DFN flow simulations is the need to provide on each fracture a good quality mesh [24,20,29,30] on any randomly generated configuration. Namely, if classical triangular or quadrilateral meshes on the fractures are required to be conforming to the traces (fracture intersections), and also conforming each other, the meshing process for each fracture is not independent of the others, thus yielding in practice a quite demanding computational effort for the mesh generation process.…”

“…Namely, if classical triangular or quadrilateral meshes on the fractures are required to be conforming to the traces (fracture intersections), and also conforming each other, the meshing process for each fracture is not independent of the others, thus yielding in practice a quite demanding computational effort for the mesh generation process. In some cases, the meshing process may even result infeasible so that some authors propose to modify the DFN removing problematic fractures [24].…”