Abstract
The aim of this study is to compare numerical methods for the simulation of single-phase flow and transport in fractured media, described here by means of the discrete fracture network (DFN) model. A Darcy problem is solved to compute the advective field, then used in a subsequent time-dependent transport-diffusion-reaction problem. The numerical schemes are benchmarked in terms of flexibility in handling geometrical complexity, mass conservation, and stability issues for advection-dominated flow regimes. To this end, two benchmark cases, along with an additional one from a previous work, have been specifically designed and are here proposed and investigated, representing some of the most critical issues encountered in DFN simulations.
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Acknowledgements
Open access funding provided by Politecnico di Milano within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. The authors warmly thank Luisa F. Zuluaga for constructing and providing the real fracture network for the example in Section 4.3. Finally, the authors warmly thank the PorePy development team for many fruitful discussions related to the development of this work.
Funding
This research has been partially supported by the MIUR project “Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018 - 2022” (CUP E11G18000350001), PRIN project “Virtual Element Methods: Analysis and Applications” (201744KLJL_004) and by INdAM - GNCS. The second author received financial support for the ANIGMA project from the Research Council of Norway (project no. 244129/E20) through the ENERGIX program and from the “Visiting Professor Project” of Politecnico di Torino. The first and third author received financial support from Politecnico di Torino through project “Starting grant RTD.”
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Borio, A., Fumagalli, A. & Scialò, S. Comparison of the response to geometrical complexity of methods for unstationary simulations in discrete fracture networks with conforming, polygonal, and non-matching grids. Comput Geosci 25, 143–162 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-020-09996-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-020-09996-9
Keywords
- Discrete fracture network
- Benchmark
- Discretization methods
- Domain decomposition
- Non-matching grids
- Polygonal grids