Print Email Facebook Twitter Flow in Fractured Media: a Darcy-Stokes-Brinkman Modelling Approach Title Flow in Fractured Media: a Darcy-Stokes-Brinkman Modelling Approach Author Morito Mansur, Gabriella (TU Delft Civil Engineering and Geosciences; TU Delft Geoscience and Engineering) Contributor Hajibeygi, Hadi (mentor) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Date 2018-02-13 Abstract Coupling between porous media and free flow is widely present in many applications. In fractured reservoirs, fractures are often treated as parallel (smooth) plates, between which the flow is assumed to be steady state fully developed, with no-slip boundary condition. Under these assumptions, the Darcy law is employed inside fractures with permeability (Kf ) as a quadratic function of aperture (a), i.e., Kf = a2/12. Although this model is a rough simplification of real rock fractures, it is still widely used in subsurface flowmodelling. This study aims to investigate the validity range of the so-called local cubic law (LCL) by using a Darcy-Stokes-Brinkman model in which a unified formulation describes the Stokes flow in the free-flow sub-domain and Darcy flow in the porous sub-domain. Two simulation strategies are developed: a sequentially coupled approach, and a fully coupled approach. The nonlinear velocity profiles inside the free flow require enough grid resolution to be captured. As such, the grid resolution sensitivity is presented. More importantly, the permeability contrast between the two media is found to be an important factor for the applicability of the LCL (Darcy-Darcy) approach. A threshold of 10−7 is found, below which the difference between the two modelling approaches is negligible, and above which the LCL model no longer provide reasonable results. Subject brinkmanPorous Mediafractured reservoirreservoir simulationDarcy-Brinkman-Stokes To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:141b27d5-46a2-4e92-9b28-5620298ccd78 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2018 Gabriella Morito Mansur Files PDF MSc._Thesis_G_Mansur.pdf 3.19 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:141b27d5-46a2-4e92-9b28-5620298ccd78/datastream/OBJ/view