Evaluation of the Spatial Variability of the Mechanical Properties of Rocks Using Non‐Iterative Green's Function Approach and the FOSM Method

Abstract

The present work proposes a new version of the Green‐FOSM (first‐order second moment) method, which eliminates the iterative calculation process of the original version and, simultaneously, solves the convergence problems related to the mechanical properties of rocks that form the geological formation. In this calculation scheme, the iterative process is eliminated by using a matrix that correlates the nodal displacement vector with the strain vector. Considering the same computational resources, this non‐iterative version of the Green‐FOSM method is up to 200 times faster than the original iterative process. In addition, it allows analyzing problems with more than 10,000 random variables, value that in the original method is less than 3000. To demonstrate its validity, the proposed method is applied to two hypothetical models subjected to different fluid extraction processes. For all the different levels of correlation and spatial variability, the statistical results obtained by the proposed method agree well with the results obtained via Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). The relationship between CPU times demonstrates that the proposed method is at least 50 times faster than MCS. In the end, the non‐iterative Green‐FOSM method is used to obtain the displacement, strain, and stress fields of a geological section constructed from a seismic image of Brazilian pre‐salt oil region. The results found show that, depending on the levels of spatial variability, the analyzed fields can assume values up to 30.6% higher or lower than the values obtained deterministically.