A hybrid upwind scheme for two-phase flow in fractured porous media

Simulating the flow of two fluid phases in porous media is a challenging task, especially when fractures are included in the simulation. Fractures may have highly heterogeneous properties compared to the surrounding rock matrix, significantly affecting fluid flow, and at the same time hydraulic apertures that are much smaller than any other characteristic sizes in the domain. Generally, flow simulators face difficulties with counter-current flow, generated by gravity and pressure gradients, which hinders the convergence of non-linear solvers (Newton).

In this work, we model the fracture geometry with a mixed-dimensional discrete fracture network, thus lightening the computational burden associated to an equi-dimensional representation. We address the issue of counter-current flows with appropriate spatial discretization of the advective fluid fluxes, with the aim of improving the convergence speed of the non-linear solver. In particular, the extension of the hybrid upwinding to the mixed-dimensional framework, with the use of a phase potential upstreaming at the interfaces of subdomains.

We test the method across several cases with different flow regimes and fracture network geometries. Results show robustness of the chosen discretization and a consistent improvements, in terms of Newton iterations, compared to using phase potential upstreaming everywhere.