A Comparison of Techniques for Coupling Porous Flow and Geomechanics

Abstract

Abstract This paper compares three techniques for coupling multiphase porous flow and geomechanics. Sample simulations are presented to highlight the similarities and differences in the techniques. One technique uses an explicit algorithm to couple porous flow and displacements where flow calculations are performed every time step and displacements are calculated only during selected time steps. A second technique uses an iteratively coupled algorithm where flow calculations and displacement calculations are performed sequentially for nonlinear iterations during time steps. The third technique uses a fully coupled approach where the program's linear solver must solve simultaneously for fluid flow variables and displacement variables. The techniques for coupling porous flow with displacements are described, and comparison problems are presented for single-phase and three-phase flow problems involving poroelastic deformations. All problems in this paper are described in detail so the results presented here may be used for comparison with other geomechanical/porous flow simulators.