33,582 research outputs found
Numerical simulation of fracture pattern development and implications for fuid flow
Simulations are instrumental to understanding
flow through discrete fracture
geometric representations that capture the large-scale permeability structure of
fractured porous media. The contribution of this thesis is threefold: an efficient
finite-element finite-volume discretisation of the advection/diffusion
flow equations, a
geomechanical fracture propagation algorithm to create fractured rock analogues,
and a study of the effect of growth on hydraulic conductivity. We describe an
iterative geomechanics-based finite-element model to simulate quasi-static crack
propagation in a linear elastic matrix from an initial set of random
flaws. The
cornerstones are a failure and propagation criterion as well as a geometric kernel for
dynamic shape housekeeping and automatic remeshing. Two-dimensional patterns
exhibit connectivity, spacing, and density distributions reproducing en echelon crack
linkage, tip hooking, and polygonal shrinkage forms. Differential stresses at the
boundaries yield fracture curving. A stress field study shows that curvature can be
suppressed by layer interaction effects. Our method is appropriate to model layered
media where interaction with neighbouring layers does not dominate deformation.
Geomechanically generated fracture patterns are the input to single-phase
flow
simulations through fractures and matrix. Thus, results are applicable to fractured
porous media in addition to crystalline rocks. Stress state and deformation history
control emergent local fracture apertures. Results depend on the number of initial
flaws, their initial random distribution, and the permeability of the matrix. Straightpath
fracture pattern simplifications yield a lower effective permeability in comparison
to their curved counterparts. Fixed apertures overestimate the conductivity of
the rock by up to six orders of magnitude. Local sample percolation effects
are representative of the entire model
flow behaviour for geomechanical apertures.
Effective permeability in fracture dataset subregions are higher than the overall
conductivity of the system. The presented methodology captures emerging patterns
due to evolving geometric and
flow properties essential to the realistic simulation of
subsurface processes
Impact of anisotropy and fracture density on the approximation of the effective permeability of a fractured rock mass using 2D models
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Parallel numerical modeling of hybrid-dimensional compositional non-isothermal Darcy flows in fractured porous media
This paper introduces a new discrete fracture model accounting for
non-isothermal compositional multiphase Darcy flows and complex networks of
fractures with intersecting, immersed and non immersed fractures. The so called
hybrid-dimensional model using a 2D model in the fractures coupled with a 3D
model in the matrix is first derived rigorously starting from the
equi-dimensional matrix fracture model. Then, it is dis-cretized using a fully
implicit time integration combined with the Vertex Approximate Gradient (VAG)
finite volume scheme which is adapted to polyhedral meshes and anisotropic
heterogeneous media. The fully coupled systems are assembled and solved in
parallel using the Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) paradigm with one layer
of ghost cells. This strategy allows for a local assembly of the discrete
systems. An efficient preconditioner is implemented to solve the linear systems
at each time step and each Newton type iteration of the simulation. The
numerical efficiency of our approach is assessed on different meshes, fracture
networks, and physical settings in terms of parallel scalability, nonlinear
convergence and linear convergence
Evaluation of Low Permeability, Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoir with Pressure Transient Analysis
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