How to create a sealing fault in flow simulation ?

[alexandrebtessael]

Hello. I am working on an imported mesh which contains several faults to perform multiphaseWell simulations.
The mesh is a .msh file in which I used the PhysicalNames to define a surface region called 'Fault' composed of only quadrangles :

$PhysicalNames
1
1 2 2 "Fault"
$EndPhysicalNames

I want to create sealing faults but I did not find information regarding this topic in your documentation. For example in Eclipse, I used to modify the transmissibility of the faults to obtain this certain behaviour. I was wondering if you could please tell me how to do this in GEOSX.

[francoishamon]

Hello @alexandrebtessael

If you want to reproduce the Eclipse-style transmissibility multiplier in this simulation, you can add in the FieldSpecifications block:

  <FieldSpecification                                                                                                                                                                          
      name="barrierTransMult"                                                                                                                                                                    
      objectPath="faceManager"                                                                                                                                                                   
      fieldName="permeabilityTransMultiplier"                                                                                                                                                    
      scale="0"                                                                                                                                                                                  
      initialCondition="1"                                                                                                                                                                       
      setNames="{ Fault }"/> 

where Fault is the surface tag used in the msh file, and the value of scale is the multiplier (0 for a seal).

Let me know if you encounter some issues while doing that.

[alexandrebtessael]

Hello @francoishamon and thanks for your answer. I tried your method but it did not change the behaviour of the faults unfortunately.
To try again your method on a smaller model, I created a cube_5x5x5.msh with a vertical fault. I added one well with water injection and one production well but it still produced the same result with water flowing behind the fault (see screenshot below).

Can you please have a look at my files and tell me if I am missing something to make it work ?
The link to the files is : https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=fa88e4b6-ca51-4a0f-b0eb-017f58dd87de

[francoishamon]

I encourage you to use a more recent version of GEOSX, if you can recompile. @klevzoff has enabled the logLevel for the mesh import, which you can always leave equal to 1, because it will save you a lot of time debugging this type of problem.

In this case, the log says that PAMELA imports the fault under the name DEFAULT (there may be a tagging problem in your file), so you need to write:

  <FieldSpecification                                                                                                                                                                          
      name="barrierTransMult"                                                                                                                                                                    
      objectPath="faceManager"                                                                                                                                                                   
      fieldName="permeabilityTransMultiplier"                                                                                                                                                    
      scale="0"                                                                                                                                                                                  
      initialCondition="1"                                                                                                                                                                       
      setNames="{ DEFAULT }"/>

and then it will work.

The updated xml is attached:
cube_multiphaseWell_fault.txt

[alexandrebtessael]

Hello @francoishamon , I thought I had responded to your message, thanks a lot ! It did work the way I wanted on my model.