Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Shikun Zhang, Zuo Chen, Xiaohui Wang, Xuyang Zhao, Jiaying Lin, Bolong Zhu, Qian Wen, Qi Jing
Summary: Minimum principal stress is a crucial factor in governing hydraulic fracturing behaviors in shale oil reservoirs. The existence of stress heterogeneity can affect hydraulic fracture growth, resulting in altered efficacy. This study analyzes the effect of stress heterogeneity on hydraulic fracture growth using a numerical workflow, which considers stress heterogeneity caused by legacy production in the horizontal direction and high-stress interlayers in the vertical direction. The simulation results show that stress heterogeneity leads to asymmetric fracture growth and footprints.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Weiwei Zhu, Xupeng He, Yiteng Li, Gang Lei, Ryan Santoso, Moran Wang
Summary: This study uses a stochastic discrete fracture network method to simulate fractures in subsurface formations and conducts a sensitivity analysis. The results show that critically stressed fractures form the backbone of the stimulated reservoir volume (SRV), while partially open fractures can significantly enlarge the size of SRV. Fracture roughness is the most influential factor for the total length of critically stressed fractures, and the probability of open fractures is the most significant factor for the relative increase of SRV.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Weiwei Zhu, Xupeng He, Yiteng Li, Gang Lei, Ryan Santoso, Moran Wang
Summary: The research on the stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) formed by hydraulic fracturing is essential for fluid production from low-permeability reservoirs. A global sensitivity analysis method was used to study the influential factors, finding that fracture roughness and open fracture probability are crucial factors affecting the size of SRV, with differences in influencing factors between different dimensions of fracture networks.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Xiaoxia Chen, Cheng Dai, Haoyu Fu, Yuan Tian
Summary: This study utilizes the embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) to investigate the effects of threshold pressure gradient and complex fracture systems on the production performance of hydrogen and carbon compounds under nonlinear seepage conditions. The influence of threshold pressure gradient on production is quantitatively evaluated, and a novel method for simulating fractured hydrogen and carbon compounds reservoirs is provided.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYDROGEN ENERGY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Olufemi Olorode, Harun Rashid
Summary: This study focuses on addressing the limitations of using the embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) in dealing with fractured tight rocks. The study proposes a modification to the EDFM model to address the underestimation issue in estimating oil and gas production, and the importance of this modification is validated through simulation experiments.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
G. A. Alzate-Espinosa, E. F. Araujo-Guerrero, C. A. Torres-Hernandez, C. A. Benitez-Pelaez, M. C. Herrera-Schlesinger, E. Higuita-Carvajal, A. Naranjo-Agudelo
Summary: Geomechanical analysis is crucial for assessing the productivity forecast of cyclic steam simulation (CSS) operations in heavy oil reservoirs. This study proposes a directional strain-dependent permeability model and compares it with a conventional volumetric permeability model through numerical simulation. The results show the influence of stress state, strain, and injected energy on the permeability parameter, and these findings can be used for feasibility assessment and optimization of CSS.
GEOMECHANICS AND GEOPHYSICS FOR GEO-ENERGY AND GEO-RESOURCES
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Yudong Cui, Bailu Teng, Wanjing Luo, Cheng Lu, Yingfang Zhou
Summary: Studies have shown that natural fractures are often present in hydrate reservoirs, resulting in fracture-filled hydrates. Therefore, it is crucial to predict the gas well productivity of these reservoirs. In this study, an embedded discrete fracture model is used to characterize the natural fractures and investigate their impact on gas production. The simulation results reveal that connected natural fractures significantly enhance gas production, while hydraulic fracture conductivity is more favorable than natural fracture conductivity. Moreover, a higher hydrate dissociation rate leads to a lower temperature in the fractures. This study provides a theoretical basis for efficient development of fracture-filled hydrate reservoirs in the future.
FRONTIERS IN EARTH SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Construction & Building Technology
Jan Masek, Josef Kveton, Jan Elias
Summary: An adaptive discretization refinement strategy is proposed for steady state discrete mesoscale models of coupled mechanics and mass transport in concrete. The strategy combines the Biot's theory of poromechanics with the effect of cracks on material permeability coefficient. The kinematics of the models is derived from the rigid body motion of Voronoi cells obtained by tessellation of the domain. The results demonstrate the computational time savings achieved through the adaptive technique and the agreement of outputs between the fine and adaptive models in simulations of hydraulic fracturing and three-point bending with fluid pressure loading.
CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING MATERIALS
(2023)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Manuel Gomes Correia, Goncalo Oliveira, Denis Jose Schiozer
Summary: This paper aims to represent multiscale heterogeneities in fractured karst reservoirs in Brazilian presalt fields using special connections between matrix, karst, and fracture mediums in different grid domains. The proposed method achieves a balance between accuracy and simulation time, leading to significantly improved performance in flow simulation.
SPE RESERVOIR EVALUATION & ENGINEERING
(2023)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Raquel Oliveira Lima, Leonardo Jose do Nascimento Guimaraes, Leonardo Cabral Pereira
Summary: This paper presents a coupled finite element approach for modeling geomechanical effects induced by production/injection processes in petroleum reservoirs. By changing the effective stress and stress-dependent reservoir properties, the flow and mechanical problems are coupled to quantify the impact of rock deformation on fluid recovery. The analyses predicted higher oil recovery compared to conventional reservoir studies, highlighting the importance of considering reservoir deformation in reservoir engineering.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Yong Do Kim, Louis J. Durlofsky
Summary: In this study, a deep-learning-based surrogate model is proposed to predict time-varying well flow rates in multiple fracture realizations. This model utilizes convolutional and recurrent neural networks to capture the spatial variability of fractures and uses the single-phase steady-state pressure solution on a structured rock-matrix grid as input. The resulting proxy provides accurate and fast predictions for optimization purposes, with a significant improvement in net present value and overall speedup compared to simulation-based optimization.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Jianchun Xu, Huating Qin, Hangyu Li
Summary: This study proposes a new method, called the Laplace-transform embedded discrete fracture model, for simulating fluid transport in hydraulic fracturing. The model accurately predicts the flow behavior in complex reservoir volumes with multiple fractures, and has been validated through numerical tests and comparisons with other models. Three applications of the model are also provided.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Sahil Wani, Rahul Samala, Ramesh Kannan Kandasami, Abhijit Chaudhuri
Summary: This study presents a custom-developed coupled THMC solver to realistically quantify the gas production and associated sediment deformation. The results indicate that the well-bore in the middle of the reservoir yields the highest cumulative gas production while differential settlement is minimum, thus making it a preferable location for placing the horizontal well-bores.
COMPUTERS AND GEOTECHNICS
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Petroleum
Yongzan Liu, Lijun Liu, Juliana Y. Leung, Kan Wu, George Moridis
Summary: Unconventional tight reservoirs with low permeability and low porosity have been challenging to develop, but techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and water injection can improve hydrocarbon recovery. This study analyzes the feasibility and efficiency of interfracture water injection in enhancing oil recovery in tight oil reservoirs through a coupled flow/geomechanics model. Results show that interfracture water injection can be a promising EOR technique for tight oil reservoirs.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Shiming Wei, Jiawei Kao, Yan Jin, Can Shi, Yang Xia, Shun Liu
Summary: This paper presents a discontinuous discrete fracture model for coupled flow and geomechanics in fractured reservoirs, which is validated for its feasibility and accuracy in simulating fracture propagation and predicting production. The model offers a more realistic description and higher practical value for simulating hydraulic fracturing and production processes.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2021)
Review
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Sergi Molins, Cyprien Soulaine, Nikolaos I. Prasianakis, Aida Abbasi, Philippe Poncet, Anthony J. C. Ladd, Vitalii Starchenko, Sophie Roman, David Trebotich, Hamdi A. Tchelepi, Carl I. Steefel
Summary: This study introduces a benchmark problem for evaluating the simulation of single-phase flow, reactive transport, and solid geometry evolution at the pore scale. By comparing results from five different codes, it demonstrates significant agreement both quantitatively and qualitatively, providing a strong benchmark for validating and testing pore-scale codes.
COMPUTATIONAL GEOSCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Water Resources
Ricardo H. Deucher, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: An adaptive scheme for sequential reactive transport involving two fluid phases is presented in this study. The domain is decomposed into coarse gridblocks and transport problems are defined and solved on each of these blocks, using a prolongation operator for accurate reconstruction of fine-scale solutions. The prolongation operator is independent of chemical reactions details, providing implementation flexibility and applicability to various conditions.
ADVANCES IN WATER RESOURCES
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Multidisciplinary
Yashar Mehmani, Nicola Castelletto, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: The study introduces an immersed boundary finite volume (IBM) method for simulating quasistatic contact mechanics of linearly elastic domains at small strains, including contact constraints and Newton method. It analyzes the divergence issue of the Newton method and proposes a modified solver to ensure convergence.
COMPUTER METHODS IN APPLIED MECHANICS AND ENGINEERING
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Arnout M. P. Boelens, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: This study investigates how morphology and topology influence wall adsorption and capillary condensation under tight confinement. The Minkowski functionals are found to provide a good description of the behavior of Lennard-Jones fluids, even at small system sizes. Through decomposition of the free energy, the Minkowski functionals offer a good framework for understanding the dominant contributions to the phase behavior of a system. Additionally, the study shows that topology has different effects on phase transitions depending on whether they are continuous or discrete.
Article
Engineering, Multidisciplinary
Sebastian B. M. Bosma, Francois P. Hamon, Brad T. Mallison, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: In subsurface multiphase flow simulations, poor performance of nonlinear solvers is a significant issue, but a new optimized scheme can greatly reduce the number of nonlinear iterations and improve efficiency.
COMPUTER METHODS IN APPLIED MECHANICS AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Yashar Mehmani, Timothy Anderson, Yuhang Wang, Saman A. Aryana, Ilenia Battiato, Hamdi A. Tchelepi, Anthony R. Kovscek
Summary: Shales will play a key role in the transition to renewable energy but face challenges due to their nanoporous structure and extreme heterogeneity. Challenges include understanding fluid flow and phase behavior in shales, and the lack of scale separation for reliable physics descriptions. Advances in computational power, imaging technology, and machine learning are helping to address these challenges through scale translation methods.
EARTH-SCIENCE REVIEWS
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Petroleum
I Shovkun, H. A. Tchelepi
Summary: The study aims to develop a spatial discretization scheme that cuts the matrix grid with fracture planes to model fluid flow and mechanical deformation in fractured reservoirs. It utilizes traditional formulations and numerical harmonic shape functions to accurately describe the behavior of fractured formations. The proposed approach is validated and compared with existing methods, demonstrating its feasibility and effectiveness.
Article
Computer Science, Software Engineering
Arnout M. P. Boelens, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: The Minkowski functionals and functions are a family of morphological measures used to describe the shape and connectedness of a system. The QuantImPy Python package presented in this paper can compute Minkowski functionals and functions, perform basic morphological operations, and compute distance maps efficiently. QuantImPy is easy to install, well-documented, integrated with existing Python packages, and open source.
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Andrea Franceschini, Nicola Castelletto, Joshua A. White, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: In this paper, a family of preconditioning strategies for the contact problem in fractured and faulted porous media is presented. The strategies combine low-order continuous finite elements and piecewise constant Lagrange multipliers to simulate bulk deformation and impose frictional contact constraints. A novel jump stabilization technique is introduced to improve previous work, and scalable preconditioning strategies that exploit the block structure of the Jacobian matrix are designed. The proposed preconditioners achieve success by eliminating the Lagrange multiplier degrees of freedom and efficiently solving the pseudo-Schur complement. Numerical results demonstrate the theoretical properties, scalability, and robustness of the preconditioner, along with a comparison to other approaches in the literature.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Multidisciplinary
Bazyli Klockiewicz, Leopold Cambier, Ryan Humble, Hamdi Tchelepi, Eric Darve
Summary: This paper presents a second-order accurate approach to sparsify the off-diagonal matrix blocks in solving sparse linear systems. By sparsifying the fill-in matrix blocks in block Gaussian elimination, an approximate factorization of the given matrix is computed. The new approach incorporates squared 2-norm of the incurred error in the sparsification of a matrix block, resulting in faster convergence and improved overall performance of the algorithm.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Electrochemistry
Weiyu Li, Hamdi A. Tchelepi, Yiguang Ju, Daniel M. Tartakovsky
Summary: Dendritic growth is a major cause of degradation and failure in lithium-metal batteries. This study shows that changes in the local electric field and the use of anisotropic electrolytes can suppress dendritic growth of lithium metal.
JOURNAL OF THE ELECTROCHEMICAL SOCIETY
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Ricardo H. Deucher, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: The Adaptive Implicit Method (AIM) is a technique that reduces computational costs in simulations of field scale displacements in porous media. By using a mixed implicit/explicit time discretization and high-order fluxes, AIM overcomes limitations of purely explicit approaches and improves accuracy. A new scheme is introduced that blends implicit and explicit time discretizations along with single-point upwind and a high-order flux-limited total variation diminishing approximation of numerical fluxes, resulting in reduced numerical diffusion and improved accuracy.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Jiawei Li, Pavel Tomin, Hamdi Tchelepi
Summary: There is an increasing interest in developing robust and efficient sequential methods for reservoir simulation. The sequential fully implicit Newton (SFIN) method addresses the slow sequential coupling convergence issue when flow and transport problems are strongly coupled. However, the original SFIN algorithm requires fixed primary variables during the simulation. In this work, strategies are proposed to handle inconsistent primary variables and extend the SFIN method to the natural black-oil formulation.
COMPUTATIONAL GEOSCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Mamadou N'diaye, Francois P. Hamon, Hamdi A. Tchelepi
Summary: This work focuses on the development of a two-step field-split nonlinear preconditioner to accelerate the convergence of two-phase flow and transport in heterogeneous porous media. The proposed Field-Split Multiplicative Schwarz Newton (FSMSN) algorithm consists of a preconditioning step and a global step, achieving faster convergence compared to existing preconditioners and standard solution strategies. The impact of the upwinding scheme and the dynamic adaptation of subproblem tolerance in the preconditioning step are highlighted.
COMPUTATIONAL GEOSCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Catherine Spurin, Gareth G. Roberts, Conor P. B. O'Malley, Takeshi Kurotori, Samuel Krevor, Martin J. Blunt, Hamdi Tchelepi
Summary: Complex pore-scale dynamics during multiphase flow through porous rocks are not accounted for in large-scale models. However, we demonstrate that pressure fluctuations measured at the core-scale can reflect fluid displacements at the pore-scale. The spectral characteristics of pressure data provide information about flow dynamics, sample size, and rock heterogeneity. Understanding fluid flow in porous rocks is crucial for the safe storage of CO2 and hydrogen.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
