Adaptive mixed finite element methods for Darcy flow in fractured porous media

Huangxin Chen, Amgad Salama, Shuyu Sun

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we propose adaptive mixed finite element methods for simulating the single-phase Darcy flow in two-dimensional fractured porous media. The reduced model that we use for the simulation is a discrete fracture model coupling Darcy flows in the matrix and the fractures, and the fractures are modeled by one-dimensional entities. The Raviart-Thomas mixed finite element methods are utilized for the solution of the coupled Darcy flows in the matrix and the fractures. In order to improve the efficiency of the simulation, we use adaptive mixed finite element methods based on novel residual-based a posteriori error estimators. In addition, we develop an efficient upscaling algorithm to compute the effective permeability of the fractured porous media. Several interesting examples of Darcy flow in the fractured porous media are presented to demonstrate the robustness of the algorithm.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)7851-7868
Number of pages18
JournalWater Resources Research
Volume52
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 12 2016

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