Rapid Coupled Flow and Geomechanics Simulation using the Fast Marching Method

Abstract

Substantial computational time is typically a bottleneck for coupled flow-geomechanics simulation in realistic problems despite increasing importance in reservoir geomechanics. This paper presents a new, rapid, coupled flow-geomechanics simulator using the Fast Marching Method (FMM-Geo). The simulator incorporates Diffusive Time-of-Flight (DTOF), which represents the arrival time of the propagating pressure front, as a 1-D spatial coordinate to transform original multi-dimensional model into equivalent 1-D model. DTOF can be obtained by efficiently solving the Eikonal equation using the Fast Marching Method (FMM). FMM-Geo is verified for 2-D models against a benchmark simulator and has achieved order-of-magnitude faster computation while it preserved reasonable accuracy. Finally, the simulator is applied to an assisted history matching example using surface subsidence data to illustrate its computational efficiency and applicability.