Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PDGeoFF (Polyhedral Discretisation Methods for Geomechanical Simulation of Faults and Fractures in Poroelastic Media)
Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2022-06-30
The Paris agreement, adopted by 196 parties in 2015, aims at limiting global warming to below 2° compared to pre-industrial levels. To achieve this goal, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is crucial and requires the transition towards renewable energies and effective energy storage facilities. Additionally, a safe long term sequestration of CO2 is considered a promising strategy to reduce emissions into the atmosphere. The aforementioned technologies entail a massive use of the subsurface for fluids injection, storage and production. Understanding subsurface geological processes is crucial to guarantee the mechanical integrity and avoid environmental damage, such as fracturing and induced seismicity, and to develop renewable alternatives for energy generation. The key for the successful assessment of subsurface activities is the ability to perform accurate numerical simulations able to predict the effects of soil exploitation.
The PDGeoFF project focus on the design and analysis of advanced nonconforming polyhedral discretisation methods for geomechanical modelling. The versatility of polyhedral finite element methods allows to successfully tame the main numerical challenges that have to be accounted for in computational geosciences: the geometric complexity arising from the presence of various layers and fractures, the strong coupling between the flow and the mechanics, and the possible rough variations of the physical parameters. The project tackles the design and the analysis of advanced numerical methods for simulating coupled fluid flow and deformation in fractured poroelastic media. The main goal is to provide an efficient tool to evaluate and prevent risks related to several human geological activities including, in particular, geothermal power production and CO2 sequestration and storage.
During the project, we were able to develop new nonconforming polyhedral finite element methods for fully coupled problems in poromechanics taking into account the hydraulic and thermal effects on the deformation of the porous media as well as the presence of fractures and inner interface between regions with different physical properties.
The PDGeoFF project focus on the design and analysis of advanced nonconforming polyhedral discretisation methods for geomechanical modelling. The versatility of polyhedral finite element methods allows to successfully tame the main numerical challenges that have to be accounted for in computational geosciences: the geometric complexity arising from the presence of various layers and fractures, the strong coupling between the flow and the mechanics, and the possible rough variations of the physical parameters. The project tackles the design and the analysis of advanced numerical methods for simulating coupled fluid flow and deformation in fractured poroelastic media. The main goal is to provide an efficient tool to evaluate and prevent risks related to several human geological activities including, in particular, geothermal power production and CO2 sequestration and storage.
During the project, we were able to develop new nonconforming polyhedral finite element methods for fully coupled problems in poromechanics taking into account the hydraulic and thermal effects on the deformation of the porous media as well as the presence of fractures and inner interface between regions with different physical properties.
The project activities have tackled the design and the analysis of advanced mathematical and numerical methods for the simulation of coupled flow and mechanics in poroelastic media. Three main topics related to these applications in the context of geosciences have been considered: (i) the numerical modeling of flow, reactive transport, and seepage through deformable poroelastic media with fractures; (ii) the simulation of multiphysics wave propagation in heterogeneous media, such as wave phenomena in elastic, poroelastic, and poroelasto-acoustic materials with general transmission conditions between the different regions; (iii) the nonlinear, fully-coupled thermo-poroelasticity problem describing the interaction among the temperature, fluid flow, and elastic deformations within a porous material. Indeed, investigating the role of the temperature is crucial when dealing with human geological activities, such as geothermal energy production and CO2 sequestration.
The research activity carried out during the project have led to four scientific papers published in top-level international journals and three pre-prints submitted before the end of the project. A substantial effort has been dedicated to code development in order to assess the proposed methods and provide an exploitable tool for future users both from the scientific and industrial communities. The implementations are fully-available in the GitHub repository PDGEoFFEniCS. The developed software will possibly be integrated in commercial codes or scientific computing libraries.
A substantial effort has been devoted to provide engagement of the scientific community and communication of findings to the general public. This has consisted in the preparation of: (a) talks delivered at international congresses; (b) simulation results used as overview of the research activity allowing the communication also to non-expert people, and (c) project updates that have been published on the web pages dedicated to the project. The researcher have participated as a speaker in six international conferences and have co-organized four mini-symposia within international events.
The research activity carried out during the project have led to four scientific papers published in top-level international journals and three pre-prints submitted before the end of the project. A substantial effort has been dedicated to code development in order to assess the proposed methods and provide an exploitable tool for future users both from the scientific and industrial communities. The implementations are fully-available in the GitHub repository PDGEoFFEniCS. The developed software will possibly be integrated in commercial codes or scientific computing libraries.
A substantial effort has been devoted to provide engagement of the scientific community and communication of findings to the general public. This has consisted in the preparation of: (a) talks delivered at international congresses; (b) simulation results used as overview of the research activity allowing the communication also to non-expert people, and (c) project updates that have been published on the web pages dedicated to the project. The researcher have participated as a speaker in six international conferences and have co-organized four mini-symposia within international events.
The PDGeoFF project investigates the capabilities of novel discretization methods able to handle polyhedral meshes in the context of the numerical modeling of geological activities. The support of general meshes, inner discontinuities, and arbitrary-order accuracy have been proved to be fundamental for geosciences applications. A complete well-posedness and convergence analysis of the proposed method has been carried out using novel arguments. Examples of physical interest have also been considered in order to investigate the capability of the proposed method in practical scenarios. These results showed that the analyzed methods will provide a promising tool for the numerical modeling of complex subsoil processes.
The work that has been carried out during the PDGeoFF project has opened several novel research directions and many of the established theoretical results may be applied in the future in other contexts in the field of applied mathematics. Moreover, the developed software will expanded and possibly integrated in industrial codes or scientific computing libraries that may be useful for the evaluation of subsurface activities and the prevention of the related risks.
The work that has been carried out during the PDGeoFF project has opened several novel research directions and many of the established theoretical results may be applied in the future in other contexts in the field of applied mathematics. Moreover, the developed software will expanded and possibly integrated in industrial codes or scientific computing libraries that may be useful for the evaluation of subsurface activities and the prevention of the related risks.