TY - JOUR

T1 - Modeling fluid injection in fractures with a reservoir simulator coupled to a boundary element method

AU - Ganis, Benjamin

AU - Mear, Mark E.

AU - Sakhaee-Pour, A.

AU - Wheeler, Mary F.

AU - Wick, Thomas

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgments This research was funded by ConocoPhillips grant UTA10-000444, DOE grant ER25617, and NSF CDI grant DMS 0835745. The authors would like to thank Drs. Rick Dean and Joe Schmidt for many valuable discussions. The authors would also like to thank Peter Eiseman for providing the GridPro software that was used for hexahedral mesh generation. Publisher Copyright: © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Copyright: Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2014/9/1

Y1 - 2014/9/1

N2 - We describe an algorithm for modeling saturated fractures in a poroelastic domain in which the reservoir simulator is coupled with a boundary element method. A fixed stress splitting is used on the underlying fractured Biot system to iteratively couple fluid and solid mechanics systems. The fluid system consists of Darcy’s law in the reservoir and is computed with a multipoint flux mixed finite element method, and a Reynolds’ lubrication equation in the fracture solved with a mimetic finite difference method. The mechanics system consists of linear elasticity in the reservoir and is computed with a continuous Galerkin method, and linear elasticity in the fracture is solved with a weakly singular symmetric Galerkin boundary element method. This algorithm is able to compute both unknown fracture width and unknown fluid leakage rate. An interesting numerical example is presented with an injection well inside of a circular fracture.

AB - We describe an algorithm for modeling saturated fractures in a poroelastic domain in which the reservoir simulator is coupled with a boundary element method. A fixed stress splitting is used on the underlying fractured Biot system to iteratively couple fluid and solid mechanics systems. The fluid system consists of Darcy’s law in the reservoir and is computed with a multipoint flux mixed finite element method, and a Reynolds’ lubrication equation in the fracture solved with a mimetic finite difference method. The mechanics system consists of linear elasticity in the reservoir and is computed with a continuous Galerkin method, and linear elasticity in the fracture is solved with a weakly singular symmetric Galerkin boundary element method. This algorithm is able to compute both unknown fracture width and unknown fluid leakage rate. An interesting numerical example is presented with an injection well inside of a circular fracture.

KW - Boundary element

KW - Galerkin finite element

KW - Mimetic finite difference

KW - Multipoint flux mixed finite element

KW - Poroelasticity

KW - Saturated fracture

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84896574119&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s10596-013-9396-5

DO - 10.1007/s10596-013-9396-5

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84896574119

VL - 18

SP - 613

EP - 624

JO - Computational geosciences

JF - Computational geosciences

SN - 1420-0597

IS - 5

ER -