NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SYSTEM OF PDES

PRESENTER: KEVIN CARVALHO

Outline
Problem Statement
Governing Equations
Numerical Methods Used
Results
Results Discussion Stability issues
Conclusion

Problem Statement
Oil Reservoir Simulation (i.e. modelling the displacement
of oil within a porous medium by water)

Basic Governing Equations

The two basic governing equations which govern fluid flow through a porous medium are:
1.

Darcys law

2.

where takes the index of each phase

Viscous
Resistance

Effect of
gravity

Continuity equation

Mass
flux

Sourc
e
term

Rate of
accumulati
on

Modified Governing
Equations
The equations which we are going to solve are
modified governing equations for a 1-D test
case which are
1.

2.

Pressure equation

Assumptions:

Gravitational effects are negligible

The porous medium and the reservoir are homogenous

The flow is incompressible

The capillary pressure is quite small relative to average

pressure

There are no source/sink terms in the model

Saturation Equation

where
subject to the following boundary conditions
and initial conditions

Numerical Method: Solving the 1

Equation

The above equation is an elliptic equation and thus we use the following procedure.

where

&

The final discretization equation is :

The above equation gives a coefficient matrix which is tri-diagonal in the matrix form

st

Numerical Method: Solving the

nd
2 Equation

The above equation is a hyperbolic equation

and thus we use the following procedure.

Using the upwind scheme we get the final

discretization equation,

Numerical Method: Coupling

We compute the 1st and 2nd equation using the following formula:

which in the discretized form is,

Thus, the solution methodology for solving the system of PDEs is as follows:
1. Solve the 1st equation (i.e. the elliptic problem) for
2. Compute using the pressure values obtained from step 1
3. Solve the 2nd equation (i.e. the hyperbolic problem) for using the velocity values obtained
from step 2
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 for all N time steps.

Results

Results Discussion Stability

Issues

Conclusion
Using this method of solving a system of ODEs a number of complex
physics problems can be simulated
The evaluation of coefficients at old time level when solving for
pressures and saturations at a new time level, puts restrictions on the
solution which sometimes may be severe.
This numerical method is mainly used for simulation of field scale
systems, with relatively large grid blocks and slow rates of change.
It is normally not suited for simulation of rapid changes close to wells
When time steps are kept small, this numerical method provides
accurate and stable solutions to a long range of reservoir problems.

QUESTIONS?