Institut Francais Du Pe'trole

Patrick Lemonnier

Chakib Bennis

Houman Borouchaki

Nicolas Flandrin

Marc Mainguy

Pascal Longuemare

Florent Chalon

A method for evaluating fluid flows within a heterogeneous formation, crossed by one or more geometric discontinuities, comprising generating a hybrid grid from a CPG type grid and from structured grids having application, for example, in simulation of hydrocarbon reservoirs. The first stage locally deforms a CPG type grid into a non-uniform Cartesian grid. These local grid cell deformations correspond to the change from a so-called 'CPG' frame of reference to a so-called 'Cartesian' frame of reference defined by the deformation. These deformations are then quantified and applied to the structured grids so as to shift to the &#x201c;Cartesian&#x201d; frame. A hybrid grid is then generated in the &#x201c;Cartesian&#x201d; frame from the two thus deformed grids. Finally, the hybrid grid is deformed to return to the &#x201c;CPG&#x201d; frame, prior to improving the grid quality, by optimization under quality control in the numerical scheme sense.

Method for simulating fluid flows within a medium discretized by a hybrid grid

A method, having application for hydrocarbon reservoir simulation, generates a hybrid grid, in order to carry out simulations in accordance with a defined numerical scheme, in three dimensions in a numerical scheme, of a heterogeneous formation crossed by at least one geometric discontinuity such as, an underground formation where at least one well has been drilled, or a fractured formation, by combining structured grids and unstructured grids. The hybrid grid includes a first structured grid for gridding the heterogeneous medium with second structured grids for gridding a zone around each discontinuity. A cavity of minimum size is automatically generated, with cells of the transition grid being an intermediate size between the size of the cells of the first grid and the size of the cells of the second grids.

Method of generating a conforming hybrid grid in three dimensions of a heterogeneous formation crossed by one or more geometric discontinuities in order to carry out simulations

A method of the invention provides improvement in the quality of coupled simulations between geomechanical and reservoir models by constructing a geomechanical model of an underground zone intended to be coupled with a reservoir model allowing simulation of fluid flows in the zone, from a geological model of the zone discretized by a fine grid. Geomechanical properties are associated with the various cells of the geological model on the basis of experimental data, the underground zone is discretized by a geomechanical grid with larger cells than the geological grid, and a scale change is applied to the geomechanical data included in the geological model in order to define equivalent geomechanical properties at the scale of the geomechanical grid of the zone.

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Paris, France

Patrick Lemonnier