Scientific understanding of fluid flow in rock fractures--a process underlying contemporary earth science problems from the search for petroleum to the controversy over nuclear waste storage--has grown significantly in the past 20 years. This volume presents a comprehensive report on the state of the field, with an interdisciplinary viewpoint, case studies of fracture sites, illustrations, conclusions, and research recommendations. The book addresses these questions: How can fractures that are significant hydraulic conductors be identified, located, and characterized? How do flow and transport occur in fracture systems? How can changes in fracture systems be predicted and controlled? Among other topics, the committee provides a geomechanical understanding of fracture formation, reviews methods for detecting subsurface fractures, and looks at the use of hydraulic and tracer tests to investigate fluid flow. The volume examines the state of conceptual and mathematical modeling, and it provides a useful framework for understanding the complexity of fracture changes that occur during fluid pumping and other engineering practices. With a practical and multidisciplinary outlook, this volume will be welcomed by geologists, petroleum geologists, geoengineers, geophysicists, hydrologists, researchers, educators and students in these fields, and public officials involved in geological projects.

Subsurface flow problems are inherently multiscale in space due to the large variability of material properties and in time due to the coupling of many different physical processes, such as advection, diffusion, reaction and phase exchange. Subsurface flow models still need considerable development. For example, nonequilibrium effects, entrapped air, anomalous dispersion and hysteresis effects can still not be adequately described. Moreover, parameters of the models are diffcult to access and often uncertain. Computational issues in subsurface flows include the treatment of strong heterogeneities and anisotropies in the models, the effcient solution of transport-reaction problems with many species, treatment of multiphase-multicomponent flows and the coupling of subsurface flow models to surface flow models given by shallow water or Stokes equations. With respect to energy and the environment, in particular the modelling and simulation of radioactive waste management and sequestration of CO2 underground have gained high interest in the community in recent years. Both applications provide unique challenges ranging from modelling of clay materials to treating very large scale models with high-performance computing. This book brings together key numerical mathematicians whose interest is in the analysis and computation of multiscale subsurface flow and practitioners from engineering and industry whose interest is in the applications of these core problems.

Presents numerical methods for reservoir simulation, with efficient implementation and examples using widely-used online open-source code, for researchers, professionals and advanced students. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The June 2001 conference brought together mathematicians, computational scientists, and engineers working on the mathematical and numerical treatment of fluid flow and transport in porous media. This collection of 43 papers from that conference reports on recent advances in network flow modeling, parallel computation, optimization, upscaling, uncertainty reduction, media characterization, and chemically reactive phenomena. Topics include modeling horizontal wells using hybrid grids in reservoir simulation, a high order Lagrangian scheme for flow through unsaturated porous media, and a streamline front tracking method for two- and three- phase flow. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This edited volume addresses the importance of mathematics for industry and society by presenting highlights from contract research at the Department of Applied Mathematics at SINTEF, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia. Examples range from computer-aided geometric design, via general purpose computing on graphics cards, to reservoir simulation for enhanced oil recovery. Contributions are written in a tutorial style.

In this standard reference of the field, theoretical and experimental approaches to flow, hydrodynamic dispersion, and miscible displacements in porous media and fractured rock are considered. Two different approaches are discussed and contrasted with each other. The first approach is based on the classical equations of flow and transport, called 'continuum models'. The second approach is based on modern methods of statistical physics of disordered media; that is, on 'discrete models', which have become increasingly popular over the past 15 years. The book is unique in its scope, since (1) there is currently no book that compares the two approaches, and covers all important aspects of porous media problems; and (2) includes discussion of fractured rocks, which so far has been treated as a separate subject. Portions of the book would be suitable for an advanced undergraduate course. The book will be ideal for graduate courses on the subject, and can be used by chemical, petroleum, civil, environmental engineers, and geologists, as well as physicists, applied physicist and allied scientists that deal with various porous media problems.