Assessment of Retention Processes for Transport in a Fractured System at Äspö (Sweden) Granitic Site: from Short-Time Experiments to Long-Time Predictive Models

Grenier, Christophe; Fourno, André; Mouche, Emmanuel; Delay, Frédérick; Benabderrahmane, H.

doi:10.1029/162gm12

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Transfers in fractured porous media modeling is still a challenging issue having a broad variety of applications ranging from geothermal energy recovery (Aquilina et al, 1998), petroleum exploration and production (Bourbiaux, 2010), CO 2 geological storage to nuclear waste disposal (Grenier et al, 2005). Fracture networks may be studied using either continuous (Svensson, 2001;Karimi-Fard et al, 2006;Fourno et al, 2007) or Discrete Fracture Networks (DFN) models (Erhel et al, 2009;Hyman et al, 2014;Delorme et al, 2016;Ricois et al, 2016;Berrone et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter was initially developed in the late 1980s (e.g., Pruess and Narasimhan, 1985;Pruess et al, 1990) and improved more recently (e.g., Karimi-Fard et al, 2006;Tatomir et al, 2011;. Semi-analytical approximations may also be used (Grenier et al, 2005;Painter et al, 2008;Noetinger, 2015). These approaches are useful because they allow to avoid challenging meshing issues.…”

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confidence: 99%

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FraC: A new conforming mesh method for discrete fracture networks

Fourno

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Nœtinger

et al. 2019

Journal of Computational Physics

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The Fracture Cut (FraC) approach to mesh three-dimensional (3D) Discrete Fracture Networks (DFN) is presented. The considered DFNs consist of a network of planar twodimensional (2D) fractures sharing intersections that can in turn intersect themselves, resulting in highly complex meshing issues. The key idea of FraC is to decompose each fracture into a set of connected closed contours, with the original intersection traces located at the boundaries of the contours. Thus, intersection segments can be more easily accounted for when building a conforming mesh. Three distinct strategies for intersection points management are also proposed to enhance the quality of resulting meshes. Steady-state singlephase flow simulations are performed to validate the conform meshes obtained using FraC.The results from flow simulations as well as from a mesh quality analysis on a benchmark case show that a flexible AoM strategy (Adding or Moving intersection points) appears to be the best choice to generate ready-to-run meshes for complex DFN. This approach also allows accounting for tiny features within the fracture networks while keeping a good mesh quality and respecting DFN connectivity. Finally, a scalability of the mesh generator is conducted to assess the performance of the approach.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

FraC: A new conforming mesh method for discrete fracture networks

Fourno

Ngo

Nœtinger

et al. 2019

Journal of Computational Physics

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“…During recent decades, modeling of transport processes in fractured porous media has received increasing attention from the geoscientist community because of its wide range of applications in geothermal energy (Aquilina et al, 1998), petroleum exploration and production (Bourbiaux, 2010), CO 2 geological storage and nuclear waste disposal (Grenier et al, 2005;Fourno et al, 2007). Fracture networks might consist of pre-existing natural or pressure-induced fractures in the case of hydraulic fracturing (Delorme et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling of transport processes through large-scale discrete fracture networks using conforming meshes and open-source software

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Fourno

Nœtinger

2017

Journal of Hydrology

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Most industrial and field studies of transport processes in Discrete Fracture Networks (DFNs) involve strong simplifying assumptions, especially at the meshing stage. High-accuracy simulations are therefore required for validating these simplified models and their domain of validity. The present paper proposes an efficient workflow based on open-source software to obtain transport simulations. High-quality computational meshes for DFNs are first generated using the conforming meshing approach FraC. Then, a tracer transport model implemented in the open-source code DuMux is used for simulating tracer transport driven by the advection-dispersion equation. We adopt the box method, a vertex-centered finite volume scheme for spatial discretization, which ensures concentration continuity and mass conservation at intersections between fractures. Numerical results on simple networks for validation purposes and on complex realistic DFNs are presented. An a-posteriori convergence study of the discretization method shows an order of convergence O(h) for tracer concentration with h the mesh size.

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