Advanced Geologic Modeling Using CAD and Unstructured Meshes

Abstract:

Capturing complex, multiscale geologic heterogeneity in subsurface flow models is challenging. Surface-based modeling (SBM) offers an alternative approach to conventional grid-based methods. In SBM, all geologic features that impact the distribution of material properties, such as porosity and permeability, are modeled as volumes bounded by surfaces. Within these volumes, termed geologic domains, the material properties are constant. A typical model contains numerous such domains. The surfaces have parametric, grid-free representation which, in principle, allows for unlimited complexity, since no resolution is implied at the stage of modeling and features of any scale can be included.

We demonstrate a method to create stochastic, surface-based models using computer aided design (CAD) and efficiently discretise them for flow simulation. The surfaces are represented using non-uniform, rational B-splines (NURBS), and processed in a CAD environment employing Boolean operations. We show examples of fluvial channels, fracture networks and scour events. Cartesian-like grids are not able to capture the complex geometries in these models without using excessively large numbers of grid blocks. Unstructured meshes can more efficiently approximate the geometries. However, high aspect ratio features and varying curvatures present challenges for algorithms to produce quality, unstructured meshes without excessive user interaction.

We contribute an automated integrated workflow that processes the input geometry created in the CAD environment, creates the final model, and discretises it with a quality tetrahedral mesh. For computational efficiency, we use a geometry-adaptive mesh that distributes the element density and size in accordance with the geometrical complexity of the model. We show examples of finite-element flow simulations of the resulting geologic models. The new approach has broad application in modeling subsurface flow.