An Equi-Dimensional Finite Element Approach for Flow Problems in Fractured Porous Media

Abstract

We propose a novel approach for flow simulations in fractured porous media based on an equi-dimensional representation of the fractures and a standard continuous finite element (FE) method. We employ an adaptive mesh refinement strategy to automatically adjust an initial regular mesh to any fracture distribution with a desired accuracy. The proposed approach is easily implementable in any FE software, does not involve the coupling of different discretizations, and provides symmetric and positive definite stiffness matrices. We provide a systematic validation of our method and we show that it can be used to simulate fluid flow for fracture networks of realistic complexity.