A Coupled Reservoir and Geomechanical Simulation System

Abstract

Summary Current simulation models do not account for the interactions among the geomechanical behavior, formation fracturing and multiphase flow, and heat transfer in porous media. This paper describes a method for modular coupling of a commercial reservoir simulator with a three-dimensional (3D) stress code and fracture-propagation model. The iteratively coupled system is equivalent to a fully coupled solution of flow and stress. The iterative method is very robust. An experience with acceleration of the iteration is described, and the utility of the method is demonstrated on examples. The comparison with an uncoupled solution shows that significantly different (and more realistic) answers are obtained with the coupled modeling. The current limitations and future work are also discussed.