Handling Domain Discontinuity With The Help of Grid Optimization Techniques

摘要

Method for mapping a 3D grid or mesh from a faulted subsurface domain to a continuous design domain, wherein the grid may be used to represent a discrete model of a subsurface material property (such as permeability) to use, for example, in a reservoir simulator. The mapping is geometry-based, not physics-based. The mapping is determined by an iterative optimization procedure designed to penalize deformation of tessellated mesh cells (703) in the design domain compared to their geometric quality in the faulted domain (701), but subject to stitching constraints (702) appearing as a penalty term or Lagrange multiplier term in the optimization objective function to influence the final mesh to co-locate pairs of points identified on opposite sides of a fault as having been located together before the fault occurred.

主权项

1. A method for generating a model of a material property of a faulted subsurface region for hydrocarbon prospecting or reservoir development, said method comprising:
generating, using a computer, a mapping of a model mesh representing a physical domain of the subsurface region, with faults, to an optimized mesh representing a continuous design space in which all faults are removed, said mapping being designed to minimize deformation in mesh cells; assigning values of the material property to continuous volumes in the optimized mesh to generate a model of the material property in the design space, and using that to generate a model of the material property in the faulted physical domain; and using the model of the material property in the faulted physical domain for hydrocarbon prospecting or reservoir development in the subsurface region.