Constructing a volumetric model from a complex 3D structural pilot area in the German North Sea Sector

Björn Zehner. ( 2018 )
in: 2018 Ring Meeting, ASGA

Abstract

Many projects that deal with the construction of 3D structural models of the subsurface do not model the geological bodies (rock units) directly, but instead describe them indirectly by modeling and rendering the interfaces between these bodies. Converting these surface-based models into volumetric models is necessary if they are to be used for process simulation with finite elements or finite differences, but it also helps to provide more intuitive visualizations. In the past, we have described several workflows, involving the use of the external software packages Gmsh and TetGen, to construct a volumetric tetrahedral representation of the 3D geological subsurface starting from these 3D models. In all these cases the scenarios presented were structurally fairly simple, hence the performance of the suggested workflows needed to be tested using a much more complicated model. The 3D geological model which has been used for this study is a small 10x20 km large sub-region of the “Entenschnabel” in the German North Sea Sector which involves 16 horizons, 43 faults and two salt diapirs.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{RUNKJRM98,
 abstract = { Many projects that deal with the construction of 3D structural models of the subsurface do not model the geological bodies (rock units) directly, but instead describe them indirectly by modeling and rendering the interfaces between these bodies. Converting these surface-based models into volumetric models is necessary if they are to be used for process simulation with finite elements or finite differences, but it also helps to provide more intuitive visualizations. In the past, we have described several workflows, involving the use of the external software packages Gmsh and TetGen, to construct a volumetric tetrahedral representation of the 3D geological subsurface starting from these 3D models. In all these cases the scenarios presented were structurally fairly simple, hence the performance of the suggested workflows needed to be tested using a much more complicated model. The 3D geological model which has been used for this study is a small 10x20 km large sub-region of the “Entenschnabel” in the German North Sea Sector which involves 16 horizons, 43 faults and two salt diapirs. },
 author = { Zehner, Björn },
 booktitle = { 2018 Ring Meeting },
 publisher = { ASGA },
 title = { Constructing a volumetric model from a complex 3D structural pilot area in the German North Sea Sector },
 year = { 2018 }
}