A Real 3D fracture modeling by truncated grid
Why would you choose truncated grid to simulate fracture?
The common modeling method is to simplify fractures as 2.5D, neglecting the vertical inclination. This kind of simplification leads to errors in flow simulation, especially for large scale fractures which usually control the main flow. Moreover, the error accumulates as the number of fractures increasing, which greatly affects the history matching and dynamic simulation.
GridWorld has developed a kind of unstructured grid—truncated grid. The key advantage of truncated grid is to capture the faults and fracture networks in 3D model without compromises in detail or number.
The truncated grid honors the real lateral and vertical extension of the fracture and the fracture plane is conformed to the matrix grid. There is no need to add local grid refinement near the fracture. The truncated grid can accurately capture the geometries of fracture-to-fracture and fracture-to-matrix with normal grid size, which greatly improves the efficiency of flow simulation. Therefore, a common computer is able to handle the simulation workload instead of using a professional workstation. It is not only time-saving but also capital-saving.
But truncated grid is one of the unstructured grids, most simulators can not handle this kind of grid. If you have any advice for that or can suggest simulators which can process unstructured grid, just leave your comment here and we will be honor to have further discussions with you.