Abstract
Abstract. Realistic modelling of tightly coupled hydro-geomechanical processes is relevant for the assessment of many hydrological and geotechnical applications. Such processes occur in geologic formations and are influenced by natural heterogeneity. Current numerical libraries offer capabilities and physics couplings that have proven to be valuable in many geotechnical fields like gas storage, rock fracturing and Earth resources extraction. However, implementation and verification of the full heterogeneity of subsurface properties using high-resolution field data in coupled simulations has not been done before. We develop, verify and document RHEA (Real HEterogeneity App), an open-source, fully coupled, finite-element application capable of including element-resolution hydro-geomechanical properties in coupled simulations. To extend current modelling capabilities of the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE), we added new code that handles spatially distributed data of all hydro-geomechanical properties. We further propose a simple yet powerful workflow to facilitate the incorporation of such data to MOOSE. We then verify RHEA with analytical solutions in one and two dimensions and propose a benchmark semi-analytical problem to verify heterogeneous systems with sharp gradients. Finally, we demonstrate RHEA's capabilities with a comprehensive example including realistic properties. With this we demonstrate that RHEA is a verified open-source application able to include complex geology to perform scalable, fully coupled, hydro-geomechanical simulations. Our work is a valuable tool to assess challenging real-world hydro-geomechanical systems that may include different levels of complexity like heterogeneous geology and sharp gradients produced by contrasting subsurface properties.
Highlights
The complexity of processes occurring in a fluid-saturated deformable porous medium and their importance to a wide range of subsurface applications presents a major challenge for numerical modelling especially when including realistic heterogeneity
Example applications in geo-engineering that inherently require coupling of hydro-geomechanical processes are the interaction between pressure, flow and fracturing of rocks (Atkinson, 2015; Weng, 2015; Berre et al, 2019); land surface subsidence caused by the extraction of Earth resources (Peng, 2020; Ye et al, 2016); underground gas storage (Yang et al, 2016; Tarkowski, 2019); and mass movement (Zaruba and Mencl, 2014; Haque et al, 2016; Gariano and Guzzetti, 2016)
These consist of different libraries to solve for coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) applications relying on the numerical capabilities provided by TOUGH
Summary
The complexity of processes occurring in a fluid-saturated deformable porous medium and their importance to a wide range of subsurface applications presents a major challenge for numerical modelling especially when including realistic heterogeneity. Notable examples are geomechanics models based on TOUGH (Transport Of Unsaturated Groundwater and Heat) (Pruess et al, 1999; Xu et al, 2006; Lei et al, 2015; Lee et al, 2019) These consist of different libraries to solve for coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) applications relying on the numerical capabilities provided by TOUGH. The aim of this paper is to develop, verify and illustrate a novel and generic workflow for modelling fully coupled hydro-geomechanical problems allowing the inclusion of hydraulic and geomechanical heterogeneity inherent to realistic geological systems. This was achieved by extending the current capabilities of the native MOOSE physical modules, namely PorousFlow and Tensor Mechanics. We anticipate that our work will lay the foundation for accurate numerical modelling of hydro-geomechanical problems allowing full spatial heterogeneity
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