Efficient Modeling of Flow and Transport in Porous Media Using Multi-physics and Multi-scale Approaches

Abstract

Flow and transport processes in porous media including multiple fluid phases are the governing processes in a large variety of geological and technical systems. In general, these systems include processes of different complexity occurring in different parts of the domain of interest. The different processes mostly also take place on different spatial and temporal scales. It is extremely challenging to model such systems in an adequate way accounting for the spatially varying and scale-dependent character of these processes. In this work, we give a brief overview of existing upscaling, multi-scale, and multi-physics methods, and we present mathematical models and model formulations for multiphase flow in porous media including compositional and non-isothermal flow. Finally, we show simulation results for two-phase flow using a multi-physics and a multi-scale method.