A novel approach for subsurface characterization of coupled fluid flow and geomechanical deformation: the case of slight
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A novel approach for subsurface characterization of coupled fluid flow and geomechanical deformation: the case of slightly compressible flows M. R. Borges1
· F. Pereira2
Received: 17 July 2017 / Accepted: 28 May 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract We are concerned with stochastic methods for predictive simulations of flows in the subsurface that can incorporate dynamical data (such as pressure data and production curves in field-scale operations) to reduce uncertainty in determining time-dependent subsurface properties such as absolute permeability, porosity and Young’s modulus in the context of poroelasticity. There exists a considerable amount of work in the development of these methods with focus on rigid porous media. Procedures such as Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and Kalman filters have been considered for rock characterization and Monte Carlo simulations applied for predicting fluid flow. This is not the case with deformable subsurface formations. Although clearly relevant for the exploration of oil and gas, considerably less developments have been reported in this case. Difficulty arises because subsurface properties (typically modeled by time-independent random fields) change with time and known uncertainty quantification and reduction methods may not be directly applicable. Our goal here is the development of a Bayesian modeling framework that allows for the characterization of time-dependent rock properties along with the prediction of multiphase flows in such formations. The proposed framework has performed well to characterize time-dependent porosity and permeability fields in single-phase flows in heterogeneous deformable media, considering the concept of rock compressibility. Despite its simplicity, this problem gathers several characteristics of more complex models currently employed in the coupling of fluid flow and mechanical response of the reservoir solid structure. Keywords Karhunen-Lo`eve expansion · Markov chain Monte Carlo methods · Porosity and permeability · Poroelastic media · Temporal and spatial characterization Mathematics Subject Classification (2010) MSC 60J20 · MSC 76S05
1 Introduction The exploration of a subsurface formation may trigger important geomechanical phenomena such as reservoir compaction, surface subsidence, hydraulic fracturing, stress-dependent permeability, pore collapse phenomena, cap-rock integrity, well-bore instability, casing damage, sand production, strain localization and fault reactivation M. R. Borges
[email protected] 1
LNCC - National Laboratory for Scientific Computing, Av. Getulio Vargas, 333, Quitandinha - Petropolis, RJ, 25651-075, Brazil
2
UT Dallas - Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA
[15, 39]. The modeling of the geomechanical behavior can be considered within the framework of rock compressibility or in terms of changes in pore pressure that induce perturbations in the mechanical equilibrium of the porous medium leading to stress modifications which
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