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Title: Material point method modeling in oil and gas reservoirs

Patent ·
OSTI ID:1259454

A computer system and method of simulating the behavior of an oil and gas reservoir including changes in the margins of frangible solids. A system of equations including state equations such as momentum, and conservation laws such as mass conservation and volume fraction continuity, are defined and discretized for at least two phases in a modeled volume, one of which corresponds to frangible material. A material point model technique for numerically solving the system of discretized equations, to derive fluid flow at each of a plurality of mesh nodes in the modeled volume, and the velocity of at each of a plurality of particles representing the frangible material in the modeled volume. A time-splitting technique improves the computational efficiency of the simulation while maintaining accuracy on the deformation scale. The method can be applied to derive accurate upscaled model equations for larger volume scale simulations.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
Assignee:
Los Alamos National Security, LLC (Los Alamos, NM)
Patent Number(s):
9,378,310
Application Number:
13/649,655
OSTI ID:
1259454
Resource Relation:
Patent File Date: 2012 Oct 11
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (8)

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Pressure calculations in disperse and continuous multiphase flows journal January 2007
Ensemble phase averaged equations for multiphase flows in porous media. Part 2: A general theory journal July 2009
Numerical Modeling of Massive Sand Production conference April 2013