DARSim X: Fractures and Faults

Modeling and simulation of fractured porous media, either naturally or artificially fractured ones, is a challenging yet important research topic. Several additional complexities arise from the presence of these high-flow-rate lower-dimensional manifolds. In DARSim X, we focus on both modelling of coupled processes in fractured porous media at different scales, and also development of advanced simulation techniques applicable to these challenging formations.

Relevant Publications

• M. Tene, M. Al-Khobaisi, H. Hajibeygi: Algebraic multiscale method for flow in heterogeneous porous media with embedded discrete fractures (F-AMS), Journal of Computational Physics, 321 (2016) 819-845.
• Swej Shah, Olav Moyner, Matei Tene, Knut-Andreas Lie, Hadi Hajibeygi, The multiscale restriction smoothed basis method for fractured porous media (F-MsRSB), Journal of Computational Physics, 318 (2016) 36–57.
• H. Hajibeygi, D. Karvounis and P. Jenny: "A hierarchical fracture model for the iterative multiscale finite volume method", Journal of Computational Physics, 230 (2011) 8729-8743
• H. Hajibeygi, D. Karvounis and P. Jenny: System And Method For Simulating Fluid Flow In A Fractured Reservoir, US Patent : US 8798977, Granted on 5 August 2014.
• M. Tene, M. Al-Khobaisi, H. Hajibeygi: Algebraic Multiscale Solver for Flow in Heterogeneous Fractured Porous Media, SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, Houston, TX, USA, February 2015.
• A Loosely Coupled Hierarchical Fracture Model for the Iterative Multiscale Finite Volume Method, SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, 2011 (2), pp. 1213-1221; presented in the SPE RSS, Feb. 2011, Woodlands, Texas, U.S.A.
• H. Hajibeygi, R. Deb and P. Jenny: Multiscale finite volume method for non-conformal coarse grids arising from faulted porous media, SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, 2011 (2), pp. 1349-1356; presented in the SPE RSS, Feb. 2011, Woodlands, Texas, U.S.A.

Multiscale Modeling and Simulation of Fractured Media

In this research field we are developing novel multiscale methods which allow for accurate and efficient simulation of heterogeneous media with multiple fractures at different scales. For more information, please refer to the following:

Above figures show a fractured media (left), where small scale fractures are upscaled with the fine-scale matrix cells while the large-scale fracture is treated explicitly. Once the fine-scale system is governed, a multiscale method is devised and employed in order to solve the problem very efficiently while having the control on the level of accuracy (i-MSFV, C-AMS). Shown on the right is the solution of our multiscale method, where the challenge is to represent the fault accurately at the coarse-scale.