"Towards large-scale modelling of fluid flow in fractured porous media"
Abstract
Fractures are ubiquitous features of many geological formations. It is essential for petroleum and geothermal engineers to understand and predict coupled flow and transport within them. The study of naturally fractured rocks has a wide range of applications, such as multi-phase flow in petroleum and geothermal reservoirs, contaminant transport in nuclear and mine waste disposal sites, and CO2 sequestration.
To date, the complexity of fractured porous media precludes the direct incorporation of small-scale features into field-scale modelling. These features, however, can be instrumental in shaping and triggering instabilities and other forms of emergent behaviour at the field-scale. Here, I describe related numerical simulation methods and demonstrate their improved performance in single- and two-phase flow simulations with models of fractured porous media.