Fast Transmissibility Upscaling Technique for Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Sarah Vitel. ( 2006 )
in: 26th gOcad Meeting, ASGA

Abstract

As fractures strongly impact fluid flow within rocks, flow simulation in naturally fractured reservoirs has been subject to extensive studies during the past decades. However, studying such systems still faces two main problems: (1) describing fluid flow in fractured rock as reliably as possible and as fast as possible (2) dealing with an infinity of static models of petrophysical matrix and fracture properties as input. This article presents a technique based on electricity analogy, which allows fast upscaling by using electric simplification theorems (series-parallel combination / star-polygon conversion). The methodology is divided into two main steps: (1) joint discretization of matrix grid and discrete fracture network thanks to a connectivity graph (2) local combination of matrix and fracture transmissibilities to obtain an equivalent interblock transmissibility. The method is applied on a simple model in order to assess the accuracy of the upscaled model relatively to a fine reference grid; and its performance is demonstrated on a 3D highly fractured model.

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    BibTeX Reference

    @inproceedings{VitelRM2006,
     abstract = { As fractures strongly impact fluid flow within rocks, flow simulation in naturally fractured reservoirs has been subject to extensive studies during the past decades. However, studying such systems still faces two main problems: (1) describing fluid flow in fractured rock as reliably as possible and as fast as possible (2) dealing with an infinity of static models of petrophysical matrix and fracture properties as input. This article presents a technique based on electricity analogy, which allows fast upscaling by using electric simplification theorems (series-parallel combination / star-polygon conversion). The methodology is divided into two main steps: (1) joint discretization of matrix grid and discrete fracture network thanks to a connectivity graph (2) local combination of matrix and fracture transmissibilities to obtain an equivalent interblock transmissibility. The method is applied on a simple model in order to assess the accuracy of the upscaled model relatively to a fine reference grid; and its performance is demonstrated on a 3D highly fractured model. },
     author = { Vitel, Sarah },
     booktitle = { 26th gOcad Meeting },
     month = { "june" },
     publisher = { ASGA },
     title = { Fast Transmissibility Upscaling Technique for Naturally Fractured Reservoirs },
     year = { 2006 }
    }