Premium
Improving the robustness of the control volume finite element method with application to multiphase porous media flow
Author(s) -
Salinas Pablo,
Pavlidis Dimitrios,
Xie Zhihua,
Jacquemyn Carl,
Melnikova Yulia,
Jackson Matthew D,
Pain Christopher C
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in fluids
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1097-0363
pISSN - 0271-2091
DOI - 10.1002/fld.4381
Subject(s) - polygon mesh , volume mesh , finite element method , finite volume method , robustness (evolution) , porous medium , control volume , computer science , mesh generation , mathematical optimization , mathematics , algorithm , geometry , mechanics , porosity , materials science , engineering , structural engineering , physics , biochemistry , chemistry , composite material , gene
Summary Control volume finite element methods (CVFEMs) have been proposed to simulate flow in heterogeneous porous media because they are better able to capture complex geometries using unstructured meshes. However, producing good quality meshes in such models is nontrivial and may sometimes be impossible, especially when all or parts of the domains have very large aspect ratio. A novel CVFEM is proposed here that uses a control volume representation for pressure and yields significant improvements in the quality of the pressure matrix. The method is initially evaluated and then applied to a series of test cases using unstructured (triangular/tetrahedral) meshes, and numerical results are in good agreement with semianalytically obtained solutions. The convergence of the pressure matrix is then studied using complex, heterogeneous example problems. The results demonstrate that the new formulation yields a pressure matrix than can be solved efficiently even on highly distorted, tetrahedral meshes in models of heterogeneous porous media with large permeability contrasts. The new approach allows effective application of CVFEM in such models.