A new tool to seal a 3D Earth model: A cut with constraints

Euler, Nicolas; Sword, Charles H.; Dulac, Jean Claude

doi:10.1190/1.1820562

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Several approaches have been proposed to create high-quality geometric models for realistic 3D structures (Euler et al 1998;Caumon et al 2004;Prévost et al 2005;Mustapha and Mustapha 2007;Evazi and Mahani 2010;Pellerin et al 2014;Merland et al 2014). Despite all recent efforts, a fully automated solution to this problem is still lacking.…”

Section: Surface Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…However, unconditionally respecting the input geology in the discrete model can lead to meshes characterized by badly shaped wedges of the rock volume or non-conforming volumes near small fault offsets. These aspects have a negative impact on performance and stability of numerical simulations based on such geometries (Euler et al 1998;Caumon et al 2004;Mustapha and Mustapha 2007;Evazi and Mahani 2010). In the recent years, some novel methodologies have been developed to help overcome such complications for 2D and some 3D problems (Mustapha and Dimitrakopoulos 2011;Holm et al 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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MeshIt—a software for three dimensional volumetric meshing of complex faulted reservoirs

Cacace

Blöcher

2015

Environ Earth Sci

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Flow, mass and energy transport processes in natural reservoirs are controlled to a large degree by the presence of geological heterogeneities including structures such as fractures and fault zones embedded in a spatially varying three-dimensional (3D) porous matrix of the reservoir. Despite recent advances, currently, state-of-theart models rely on a number of simplifications partly related to our inability to represent heterogeneities as observed in the field into dynamic model realizations. In this respect, an adequate geometric representation of the discrete system is a basic requirement. In this study, we show how fundamental concept from computational geometry can be assembled and used to bridge the gap between geological and dynamic forward models. The result is an automated, open source software solution (MeshIt) to generate quality 3D meshes suitable for the study of flow and transport processes in faulted and fractured reservoirs. The software enables us to integrate into a 3D volumetric representation dipping structures, comprising fault zones and fractures as well as inclined well paths. This permits us to correctly simulate interactions between discrete flow paths along these interacting components and the 3D flow within the reservoir matrix. The crucial factor that makes the approach applicable to real case reservoirs is that all algorithms are local and scalable parallel and have computing times increasing approximately linearly with data volumes. We test the performance and the robustness of the software against three different scenarios of increasing complexity and further discuss current limitations and range of applicability of the software. Although all examples describe geothermal applications, it is worth mentioning that the approach is equally valid for other applications in geoscience from oil and gas industry to carbon capture and sequestration issues.

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Section: Surface Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MeshIt—a software for three dimensional volumetric meshing of complex faulted reservoirs

Cacace

Blöcher

2015

Environ Earth Sci

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“…Both radial-edge based data structures (Sword, 1991;Lamboglia, 1994;Euler, Sword, and Dulac, 1998) and 3D data structures (Hubeli, 2002;Lévy, 1999;Mallet, 2002) use this type of hierarchy.…”

Section: Topological Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building and Editing a Sealed Geological Model

Caumon

Lepage²,

Sword

et al. 2004

Mathematical Geology

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In Solid Modeling, a boundary representation (b-rep) defines solids by their bounding surfaces, providing an efficient volume description. Building on this representation, we present the notion of a Sealed Geological Model. In such a model, the geological surfaces define a partition of the domain of interest into regions; analytic functions can be defined in these regions to describe the spatial variations of the subsurface properties. Such descriptions can be used in Geophysics, 3D GIS, and for discretization purposes. In addition to the b-rep representational validity conditions, Sealed Geological Models must satisfy conditions of geological consistency. Bearing these conditions in mind, we describe a methodology to create and modify the shape of such sealed models interactively. We use the hierarchical relationship between geological surfaces to help reshape the contact between a fixed surface (a surface that other surfaces can slide along, such as a fault, erosion surface, or salt top) and a secondary deformable surface (e.g. horizon, older fault). Although designed to meet the demanding requirements of interactive model editing, our methodology could also make use of displacement vectors computed by an automatic process such as tomographic inversion or 3D balanced unfolding.

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“…Faults are very important in geological modeling because they partition space into regions where stratigraphic surfaces are continuous. It is important to generate faults and to determine how faults terminate onto each other before considering other geological surfaces (Caumon et al, 2009;Euler et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A 3D modeling approach to complex faults with multi-source data

Zou

et al. 2015

Computers & Geosciences

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A new tool to seal a 3D Earth model: A cut with constraints

Cited by 11 publications

References 1 publication

MeshIt—a software for three dimensional volumetric meshing of complex faulted reservoirs

MeshIt—a software for three dimensional volumetric meshing of complex faulted reservoirs

Building and Editing a Sealed Geological Model

A 3D modeling approach to complex faults with multi-source data

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