Modelling fluid flow in fractured‐porous rock masses by finite‐element techniques

Baca, R.G.; Arnett, Ronald C.; Langford, D.W.

doi:10.1002/fld.1650040404

Cited by 226 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Noorishad and Mehran (1982) presented a finite-element method for the transient solution of solute by dispersion and convection in 2D fractured porous media. Baca et al (1984) proposed a 2D finite-element model for single-phase flow with heat and solute transport. Later, Juanes et al (2002) presented a general finite-element model for 3D…”

Section: Discrete Fracture Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of an Efficient Embedded Discrete Fracture Model for 3D Compositional Reservoir Simulation in Fractured Reservoirs

et al. 2013

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Summary Many naturally fractured reservoirs around the world have depleted significantly, and improved-oil-recovery (IOR) processes are necessary for further development. Hence, the modeling of fractured reservoirs has received increased attention recently. Accurate modeling and simulation of naturally fractured reservoirs (NFRs) is still challenging because of permeability anisotropies and contrasts. Nonphysical abstractions inherent in conventional dual-porosity and dual-permeability models make them inadequate for solving different fluid-flow problems in fractured reservoirs. Also, recent technologies for discrete fracture modeling may suffer from large simulation run times, and the industry has not used such approaches widely, even though they give more-accurate representations of fractured reservoirs than dual-continuum models. We developed an embedded discrete fracture model (DFM) for an in-house compositional reservoir simulator that borrows the dual-medium concept from conventional dual-continuum models and also incorporates the effect of each fracture explicitly. The model is compatible with existing finite-difference reservoir simulators. In contrast to dual-continuum models, fractures have arbitrary orientations and can be oblique or vertical, honoring the complexity of a typical NFR. The accuracy of the embedded DFM is confirmed by comparing the results with the fine-grid, explicit-fracture simulations for a case study including orthogonal fractures and a case with a nonaligned fracture. We also perform a grid-sensitivity study to show the convergence of the method as the grid is refined. Our simulations indicate that to achieve accurate results, the embedded discrete fracture model may only require moderate mesh refinement around the fractures and hence offers a computationally efficient approach. Furthermore, examples of waterflooding, gas injection, and primary depletion are presented to demonstrate the performance and applicability of the developed method for simulating fluid flow in NFRs.

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Section: Discrete Fracture Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of an Efficient Embedded Discrete Fracture Model for 3D Compositional Reservoir Simulation in Fractured Reservoirs

et al. 2013

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“…[7] An alternative to dual-porosity/dual-permeability models is the discrete-fracture model [Noorishad and Mehran, 1982;Baca et al, 1984;Granet et al, 1998]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control‐volume method for numerical simulation of two‐phase immiscible flow in two‐ and three‐dimensional discrete‐fractured media

Monteagudo

Firoozabadi

2004

Water Resources Research

198

111

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[1] We provide a numerical procedure for the simulation of two-phase immiscible and incompressible flow in two-and three-dimensional discrete-fractured media. The concept of cross-flow equilibrium is used to reduce the fracture dimension from n to (n-1) in the calculation of flow in the fractures. This concept, which is often referred to as the discrete-fracture model, has a significant effect on the reduction of computational time. The spatial discretization is performed with the control-volume method. This method is locally conservative and allows the use of unstructured grids to represent complex geometries, such as discrete-fracture configurations. The relative permeability is upwinded with a criterion based on the evaluation of the flux direction at the boundaries of the control volumes, which is consistent with the physics of fluid flow. The system of partial differential equations is decoupled and solved using the implicit-pressure, explicitsaturation (IMPES) approach. The algorithm has been successfully tested in two-and three-dimensional numerical simulations of wetting phase fluid injection (such as water) in discrete-fractured media saturated by a nonwetting phase (such as nonaqueous phase liquid or oil) with mild to high nonlinearity in relative permeability and capillary pressure. To the best of our knowledge, results for simulations of two-phase immiscible and incompressible flow in three-dimensional discrete-fractured media, including capillary and gravity effects, are the first to appear in the literature.

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“…Such interface models have been studied extensively in the engineering literature, e.g. see [4,25,24,32,26,22], as well as in the mathematical literature, e.g. see [30,3,29,16,20,34,27,12,11], to name just a few.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

First-order indicators for the estimation of discrete fractures in porous media

Ameur

Chavent

Fatma

et al. 2017

Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering

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Abstract:Faults and geological barriers can drastically affect the flow patterns in porous media. Such fractures can be modeled as interfaces that interact with the surrounding matrix. We propose a new technique for the estimation of the location and hydrogeological properties of a small number of large fractures in a porous medium from given distributed pressure or flow data. At each iteration, the algorithm builds a short list of candidates by comparing fracture indicators. These indicators quantify at the first order the decrease of a data misfit function; they are cheap to compute. Then, the best candidate is picked up by minimization of the objective function for each candidate. Optimally driven by the fit to the data, the approach has the great advantage of not requiring remeshing, nor shape derivation. The stability of the algorithm is shown on a series of numerical examples representative of typical situations.

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Modelling fluid flow in fractured‐porous rock masses by finite‐element techniques

Cited by 226 publications

References 6 publications

Development of an Efficient Embedded Discrete Fracture Model for 3D Compositional Reservoir Simulation in Fractured Reservoirs

Development of an Efficient Embedded Discrete Fracture Model for 3D Compositional Reservoir Simulation in Fractured Reservoirs

Control‐volume method for numerical simulation of two‐phase immiscible flow in two‐ and three‐dimensional discrete‐fractured media

First-order indicators for the estimation of discrete fractures in porous media

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