Domain Decomposition Methods Applied to Coupled Flow-Geomechanics Reservoir Simulation

Abstract

Abstract In this work, well established Domain Decomposition techniques have been studied in order to carry out efficient simulations of coupled flow/geomechanics problems by taking full advantage of current parallel computer architectures. Different solution schemes can be defined depending upon transmission conditions among sub-domain interfaces. Three different schemes, i.e. Dirichlet-Neumann, Neumann-Neumann and Mortar-FEM, are tested and the advantages and disadvantages of each of them identified. This work will focus in the coupling of different meshes and/or physics on different domains by means of the Mortar-FEM plus the above DD-Schemes. Several examples of coupling of elasticity and poroelasticity in the context of reservoir compaction and subsidence are presented. In order to facilitate the implementation of complex workflows, we have implemented an advanced Python wrapper interface that allows programming capabilities. We have applied this platform to a variety of problems ranging from near-wellbore applications to field level subsidence calculations.