A Discontinuous Control Volume Finite Element Method for Multi-Phase Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We present a new, high-order, control-volume-finite-element (CVFE) method for multiphase porous media flow with discontinuous 1st-order representation for pressure and discontinuous 2nd-order representation for velocity. The method has been implemented using unstructured tetrahedral meshes to discretize space. The method locally and globally conserves mass. However, unlike conventional CVFE formulations, the method presented here does not require the use of control volumes (CVs) that span the boundaries between domains with differing material properties. We demonstrate that the approach accurately preserves discontinuous saturation changes caused by permeability variations across such boundaries, allowing efficient simulation of flow in highly heterogeneous models. Moreover, accurate solutions are obtained at significantly lower computational cost than using conventional CVFE methods. We resolve a long-standing problem associated with the use of classical CVFE methods to model flow in highly heterogeneous porous media.
Date Issued
2017-10-31
Online Publication Date
2017-10-31
Date Acceptance
2017-09-29
ISSN
0021-9991
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
602
End Page
614
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Computational Physics
Volume
352
Copyright Statement
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the
CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Source Database
manual-entry
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Grant Number
EP/K003976/1
EP/M012794/1
Subjects
01 Mathematical Sciences
02 Physical Sciences
09 Engineering
Applied Mathematics
Publication Status
Published