Discrete fracture models for fluid flow in fracture porous media

April 1, 2024
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Speaker: Ziyao Xu (UND)
Dates: 2024/04/05
Location: zoom, link
Abstract:  As a result of geological processes and human activities, fractures are widely distributed in subsurface rocks. Depending on the degree of precipitation, fractures can act either as highly permeable, flow-preferential channels or as low-permeability, flow-blocking barriers; both have a significant impact on the hydraulic properties of rocks.  Due to the extreme contrast in permeability and lateral scale between fractures and their surrounding rocks, accurately and efficiently modeling fluid flow in fractured porous media is highly nontrivial.

In response to this challenge, the past few decades have seen the emergence of a vibrant research domain dedicated to the development of mathematical models and numerical methods to describe and simulate the flow processes in fractured rock.
In this talk, we will briefly review the history of research in this area and various effective discrete fracture models, and introduce our recent work on the Reinterpreted Discrete Fracture Model (RDFM) using non-fitting meshes. Additionally, we will discuss our ongoing work on discrete fracture models on fitting meshes.