An efficient boundary integral formulation for flow through fractured porous media

Journal Article · Wed Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1006/jcph.1998.5858· OSTI ID:638435

Lough, M F; Lee, S H; Kamath, J ^[1]

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1. Chevron Petroleum Technology Co., La Habra, CA (United States)

In this paper the authors present a new model for flow in fractured porous media. They formulate the model in terms of a coupled system of boundary integral equations and present an efficient procedure for solving the equations using the boundary element method. In the new model, the flow in the matrix is governed by the usual Darcy law for porous media, with the fractures being treated as planar sources embedded in the matrix. The flow in an individual fracture is governed by a two-dimensional Darcy law (as in a Hele-Shaw cell), with an associated planar sink distribution. The essential feature of this approach is that the fractures are treated as special planes rather than narrow-gap voids. The error in the resulting system of equations is on the order of an intrinsic dimensionless parameter (the ratio of the fracture gap size to the scale of the volume under consideration). They also describe how they adapt the new model to compute effective grid block permeabilities. This was the principal motivation behind the development of the new model. Using effective grid block permeabilities to model flow in fractured oil and gas reservoirs is a much more efficient process than modeling the flow when every fracture is precisely represented. They present some numerical examples that illustrate the new flow model and how it is used to model flow in a reservoir.

• OSTI ID: 638435
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 143; ISSN 0021-9991; ISSN JCTPAH
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
03 NATURAL GAS
FLOW MODELS
FLUID FLOW
FRACTURED RESERVOIRS
NATURAL GAS WELLS
OIL WELLS
PERMEABILITY
POROUS MATERIALS