Métodos numéricos conservativos para escoamentos bifásicos em meios porosos heterogêneos

Abstract

The development of techniques for efficient oil extraction from reservoirs passes through the simulation of such phenomena, which is achieved by the study of mathematical models and robust, precise and efficient computational methods. This dissertation studies methods for the simulation of two-phase flows in heterogeneous porous media. To do so, we propose a “staggered” numerical approach for the numerical methods, that is based on the approximation of uncoupled systems of differential equations related to Darcy’s problems and saturation of the phases. Then, appropriate methods for each system, that best suit its characteristics can be applied. Therefore, we propose studying locally conservative finite element methods, stable and stabilized, classical and hybrid to approximate the velocity field and a non-oscillatory high order finite volume method, based on central schemes, to approximate the non-linear hyperbolic equation that governs the transport of phases. Numerical results attest to the flexibility, convergence rate and computational cost of the adopted methods, and demonstrate the effectiveness of such methods when applied to oil extraction in various heterogeneous porous media scenarios.