Fast flow computation methods on unstructured tetrahedral meshes for rapid reservoir modelling

Zhao Zhang*, Sebastian Geiger, Margaret Rood, Carl Jacquemyn, Matthew Jackson, Gary Hampson, Felipe Moura De Carvalho, Clarissa Coda Marques Machado Silva, Julio Daniel Machado Silva, Mario Costa Sousa

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)
110 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Subsurface reservoir models have a high degree of uncertainty regarding reservoir geometry and structure. A range of conceptual models should therefore be generated to explore how fluids-in-place, reservoir dynamics, and development decisions are affected by such uncertainty. The rapid reservoir modelling (RRM) workflow has been developed to prototype reservoir models across scales and test their dynamic behaviour. RRM complements existing workflows in that conceptual models can be prototyped, explored, compared, and ranked rapidly prior to detailed reservoir modelling. Reservoir geology is sketched in 2D with geological operators and translated in real-time into geologically correct 3D models. Flow diagnostics provide quantitative information for these reservoir model prototypes about their static and dynamic behaviours. A tracing algorithm is reviewed and implemented to compute time-of-flight and tracer concentrations efficiently on unstructured grids. Numerical well testing (NWT) is adopted in RRM to further interrogate the reservoir model. A new edge-based fast marching method is developed and implemented to solve the diffusive time-of-flight for approximating pressure transients efficiently on unstructured tetrahedral meshes. We demonstrate that an implementation of the workflow consisting of integrated sketch-based interface modelling, unstructured mesh generation, flow diagnostics, and numerical well testing is possible.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)641–661
Number of pages21
JournalComputational Geosciences
Volume24
Early online date28 Jun 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2020

Keywords

  • Flow diagnostics
  • Numerical well testing
  • Rapid reservoir modelling
  • Unstructured tetrahedral mesh

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computers in Earth Sciences
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Computational Mathematics

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