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Structural Engineering and Mechanics Volume 66, Number 4, May25 2018, pages 505-513 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12989/sem.2018.66.4.505 |
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Geomechanical and thermal reservoir simulation during steam flooding |
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Roohollah Taghizadeh, Kamran Goshtasbi, Abbas Khaksar Manshad and Kaveh Ahangari
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| Abstract | ||
| Steam flooding is widely used in heavy oil reservoir with coupling effects among the formation temperature change, fluid flow and solid deformation. The effective stress, porosity and permeability in this process can be affected by the multi-physical coupling of thermal, hydraulic and mechanical processes (THM), resulting in a complex interaction of geomechanical effects and multiphase flow in the porous media. Quantification of the state of deformation and stress in the reservoir is therefore essential for the correct prediction of reservoir efficiency and productivity. This paper presents a coupled fluid flow, thermal and geomechanical model employing a program (MATLAB interface code), which was developed to couple conventional reservoir (ECLIPSE) and geomechanical (ABAQUS) simulators for coupled THM processes in multiphase reservoir modeling. In each simulation cycle, time dependent reservoir pressure and temperature fields obtained from three dimensional compositional reservoir models were transferred into finite element reservoir geomechanical models in ABAQUS as multi-phase flow in deforming reservoirs cannot be performed within ABAQUS and new porosity and permeability are obtained using volumetric strains for the next analysis step. Finally, the proposed approach is illustrated on a complex coupled problem related to steam flooding in an oil reservoir. The reservoir coupled study showed that permeability and porosity increase during the injection scenario and increasing rate around injection wells exceed those of other similar comparable cases. Also, during injection, the uplift occurred very fast just above the injection wells resulting in plastic deformation. | ||
| Key Words | ||
| effective stress; multi-physical coupling; porous media; volumetric strain; permeability | ||
| Address | ||
| Roohollah Taghizadeh and Kaveh Ahangari: Department of Mining Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Kamran Goshtasbi: Department of Mining Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran Abbas Khaksar Manshad: Department of Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran | ||