Thermal reservoir modeling in petroleum geomechanics

• Published in: International journal for numerical and analytical methods in geomechanics 2009-03, Vol.33 (4), p.449-485
• Main Authors: Yin, Shunde, Dusseault, Maurice B., Rothenburg, Leo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; boundary element method; Buildings. Public works; Computation methods. Tables. Charts; Exact sciences and technology; finite element method; fully coupled thermal reservoir simulation; Geotechnics; multiphase thermoporoelasticity; petroleum geomechanics; Soil mechanics. Rocks mechanics; stabilized methods; Structural analysis. Stresses; subgrid-scale/gradient subgrid-scale method
• ISSN: 0363-9061; 1096-9853
• DOI: 10.1002/nag.723

Thermal oil recovery processes involve high pressures and temperatures, leading to large volume changes and induced stresses. These cannot be handled by traditional reservoir simulation because it does not consider coupled geomechanics effects. In this paper we present a fully coupled, thermal half‐space model using a hybrid DDFEM method. A finite element method (FEM) solution is adopted for the reservoir and the surrounding thermally affected zone, and a displacement discontinuity method is used for the surrounding elastic, non‐thermal zone. This approach analyzes stress, pressure, temperature and volume change in the reservoir; it also provides stresses and displacements around the reservoir (including transient ground surface movements) in a natural manner without introducing extra spatial discretization outside the FEM zone. To overcome spurious spatial temperature oscillations in the convection‐dominated thermal advection–diffusion problem, we place the transient problem into an advection–diffusion–reaction problem framework, which is then efficiently addressed by a stabilized finite element approach, the subgrid‐scale/gradient subgrid‐scale method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.