Numerical Simulation of Three-phase Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media
Eduardo Abreu (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)Frederico Furtado (University of Wyoming)
Felipe Pereira (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
Abstract:
We describe an efficient numerical simulator, based on an operator
splitting technique, for three-phase flow in heterogeneous porous
media that takes into account capillary forces, general relations
for the relative permeability functions and variable porosity and
permeability fields. Our numerical procedure combines a
non-oscillatory, second order, conservative central difference scheme
for the system of hyperbolic conservation laws modeling the convective
transport of the fluid phases with locally conservative mixed finite
elements for the approximation of the parabolic and elliptic problems
associated with the diffusive transport of fluid phases and the
pressure-velocity calculation. This numerical procedure has been used
to investigate the existence and stability of non-classical waves
(also called transitional or undercompressive waves) in heterogeneous
two-dimensional flows, thereby extending previous results for
one-dimensional problems.
Keywords:
Large Scale Simulations in all areas of Engineering and Science, Numerical Methods (PDE), Problem Solving Environments
