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There is strong interest to design sequential fully implicit (SFI) methods for compositional flow simulations with convergence properties that are comparable to fully implicit (FI) methods. SFI methods decompose the fully coupled system into a pressure equation and a transport system of the components. During the pressure update, the compositions are frozen, and during the transport calculations, both the pressure and total velocity are kept constant. The two systems are solved sequentially, and the solution, which is a fully implicit one, is obtained by controlling the splitting errors due to the decoupling. Having an SFI scheme that enjoys a convergence rate similar to FI makes it possible to design specialized numerical methods optimized for the different parabolic and the hyperbolic operators, as well as the use of high-order spatial and temporal discretization schemes. Here, we use the multiscale restriction-smoothed basis (MsRSB) method for the parabolic operator. We also show that phase-potential upwinding is incompatible with the total velocity formulation of the fluxes, which is common in SFI schemes. We observe that in cases with strong gravity or capillary pressure, it is possible to have flow reversals. These reversals can strongly affect the convergence rate of SFI methods. In this work, we employ phase upwinding (PU) as well as implicit hybrid upwinding (IHU) with a SFI method. IHU determines the upwinding direction differently for the viscous, buoyancy, and capillary pressure terms in the phase velocity expressions. The use of IHU leads to a consistent SFI scheme in terms of both pressure and compositions, and it improves the SFI convergence significantly in settings with strong buoyancy or capillarity. We demonstrate the robustness of the IHU-based SFI algorithm across a wide parameter range. Realistic compositional models with gas and water injection are presented and discussed.

A finite volume-based numerical modeling framework using a hierarchical fracture representation (HFR) has been developed to compute flow-induced shear failure. To accurately capture the mechanics near fracture manifolds, discontinuous basis functions are employed which ensure continuity of the displacement gradient across fractures. With these special basis functions, traction and compressive forces on the fracture segment can be calculated without any additional constraints, which is extremely useful for estimating the irreversible displacement along the fracture (slip) based on a constitutive friction law. The method is further extended to include slip-dependent hydraulic aperture change and grid convergent results are obtained. Further, the change in hydraulic aperture is modeled using an asymptotic representation which respects the experimentally observed behavior of pore volume dilation due to shear slip. The model allows the initial rapid increase in hydraulic aperture due to shear slip and asymptotically approaches a finite value after repeated shearing of a fracture segment. This aperture increase is the only feedback for mechanics into the fluid flow for a linear elastic mechanics problem. The same model is also extended to include poroelastic relations between flow and mechanics solver. The grid convergence result in the case of poroelastic flow-mechanics coupling for flow-induced shear failure is also obtained. This proves the robustness of the numerical and analytical modeling of fracture and friction in the extended finite volume method (XFVM) set-up. Finally, a grid convergent result for seismic moment magnitude for single fracture and fracture network with random initial hydraulic and friction properties is also obtained. The b-value, which represents the slope of seismic moment occurrence frequency decay vs seismic moment magnitude, which is approximately constant in a semi-logarithmic plot, is estimated. The numerical method leads to converged b-values for both single fracture and fracture network simulations, as grid and time resolutions are increased. For the resulting linear system, a sequential approach is used, that is, first, the flow and then the mechanics problems are solved. The new modeling framework is very useful to predict seismicity, permeability, and flow evolution in geological reservoirs. This is demonstrated with numerical simulations of enhancing a geothermal system.

A recently introduced subphase framework for modeling the nonwetting phase relative permeability is extended to the wetting phase. Within this framework, the wetting phase is divided into four subphases, which are distinguished by their connectivity; backbone, dendritic, isolated and corner-film subphases. The subphase saturations evolve according to inter-subphase volume transfer terms, which require modeling. An advantage of distinguishing the subphases is that wetting phase relative permeability relations as functions of these constituent subphases can be developed. In order to develop models for the inter-subphase volume transfer and the wetting phase relative permeability in a strongly wetted system, quasi-static flow simulations in pore networks were conducted to analyze the evolution of the wetting subphases during drainage and imbibition. The simulation results suggest that hysteresis trends apparent in experimentally obtained wetting phase relative permeability curves for Berea sandstone may be explained by accounting for corner-film flow.

This paper presents a finite-volume method for hexahedral multiblock grids to calculate multiphase flow in geologically complex reservoirs. Accommodating complex geologic and geometric features in a reservoir model (e.g., faults) entails non-orthogonal and/or unstructured grids in place of conventional (globally structured) Cartesian grids. To obtain flexibility in gridding as well as efficient flow computation, we use hexahedral multiblock grids. These grids are locally structured, but globally unstructured. One major advantage of these grids over fully unstructured tetrahedral grids is that most numerical methods developed for structured grids can be directly used for dealing with the local problems. We present several challenging examples, generated via a commercially available tool, that demonstrate the capabilities of hexahedral multiblock gridding. Grid quality is discussed in terms of uniformity and orthogonality. The presence of non-orthogonal grid and full permeability tensors requires the use of multi-point discretization methods. A flux-continuous finite-difference (FCFD) scheme, previously developed for stratigraphic hexahedral grid with full-tensor permeability, is employed for numerical flow computation. We extend the FCFD scheme to handle exceptional configurations (i.e. three- or five-cell connections as opposed to the regular four), which result from employing multiblock gridding of certain complex objects. In order to perform flow simulation efficiently, we employ a two-level preconditioner for solving the linear equations that results from the wide stencil of the FCFD scheme. The individual block, composed of cells that form a structured grid, serves as the local level; the higher level operates on the global block configuration (i.e. unstructured component). The implementation uses an efficient data structure where each block is wrapped with a layer of neighboring cells. We also examine splitting techniques [14] for the linear systems associated with the wide stencils of our FCFD operator. We present three numerical examples that demonstrate the method: (1) a pinchout, (2) a faulted reservoir model with internal surfaces and (3) a real reservoir model with multiple faults and internal surfaces.