Generalized Multiscale Multicontinuum Model for Fractured Vuggy Carbonate Reservoirs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel multiscale modeling approach combining GMsFEM, triple-continuum, and DFM techniques to efficiently simulate flow in highly heterogeneous fractured vuggy carbonate reservoirs, improving accuracy over existing methods.

Contribution

The paper presents a new integrated multiscale model that explicitly accounts for interactions among multiple continua and discrete fractures, enhancing flow simulation accuracy in complex reservoirs.

Findings

The proposed model accurately captures multiscale flow dynamics.

Numerical experiments confirm improved simulation accuracy.

The method effectively handles multiple fractures in a single coarse neighborhood.

Abstract

Simulating flow in a highly heterogeneous reservoir with multiscale characteristics could be considerably demanding. To tackle this problem, we propose a numerical scheme coupling the Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method (GMsFEM) with a triple-continuum model aimed at a faster simulator framework that can explicitly represent the interactions among different continua. To further enrich the descriptive ability of our proposed model, we combine the Discrete Fracture Model (DFM) to model the local effects of discrete fractures. In the proposed model, GMsFEM, as an advanced model reduction technique, enables capturing the multiscale flow dynamics. This is accomplished by systematically generating an approximation space through solving a series of local snapshot and spectral problems. The resulting eigenfunctions can pass the local features to the global level when acting as basis functions in coarse problems. Our goal in this paper is to further improve the accuracy of flow simulation in complicated reservoirs especially for the case when multiple discrete fractures located in single coarse neighborhood and multiscale finite element methods fail. Together with a detailed description of the model, several numerical experiments are conducted to confirm the success of our proposed method. A rigid proof is also given in the aspect of numerical analysis.