Section: New Results

Realistic modeling of fractured geologic media

Participants : Patrick Laug [correspondant] , Géraldine Pichot.

This study, in collaboration with project-team Serena, aims to model, in a realistic and efficient manner, natural fractured media. These media are characterized by their diversity of structures and organizations. Numerous studies in the past decades have evidenced the existence of characteristic structures at multiple scales. At fracture scale, the aperture distribution is widely correlated and heterogeneous. At network scale, the topology is complex resulting from mutual mechanical interactions as well as from major stresses. Geometric modeling of fractured networks combines in a non-standard way a large number of 2D fractures interconnected in the 3D space. Intricate local configurations of fracture intersections require original methods of geometric modeling and mesh generation. We have developed in 2016 a software package that automatically builds geometric models and surface meshes of random fracture networks. The results are highly promising and we now want to continue this research to further improve the element quality in complex configurations, take into account multiple size scales in large fracture networks (up to thousands of fractures), and compare several modeling strategies (mixed hybrid finite elements, projected grids, mortar elements) [13].