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Accurate local upscaling with variable compact multipoint transmissibility calculations

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Abstract

We propose a new single-phase local upscaling method that uses spatially varying multipoint transmissibility calculations. The method is demonstrated on two-dimensional Cartesian and adaptive Cartesian grids. For each cell face in the coarse upscaled grid, we create a local fine grid region surrounding the face on which we solve two generic local flow problems. The multipoint stencils used to calculate the fluxes across coarse grid cell faces involve the six neighboring pressure values. They are required to honor the two generic flow problems. The remaining degrees of freedom are used to maximize compactness and to ensure that the flux approximation is as close as possible to being two-point. The resulting multipoint flux approximations are spatially varying (a subset of the six neighbors is adaptively chosen) and reduce to two-point expressions in cases without full-tensor anisotropy. Numerical tests show that the method significantly improves upscaling accuracy as compared to commonly used local methods and also compares favorably with a local–global upscaling method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford University, 367 Panama St Rm 049, Stanford, CA, 94305-2220, USA

    James V. Lambers

  2. Stanford University, 367 Panama St Rm 088, Stanford, CA, 94305-2220, USA

    Margot G. Gerritsen

  3. Chevron ETC, 6001 Bollinger Canyon Rd, San Ramon, CA, 94583, USA

    Bradley T. Mallison

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  1. James V. Lambers
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  2. Margot G. Gerritsen
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  3. Bradley T. Mallison
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Correspondence to James V. Lambers.

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Lambers, J.V., Gerritsen, M.G. & Mallison, B.T. Accurate local upscaling with variable compact multipoint transmissibility calculations. Comput Geosci 12, 399–416 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-007-9068-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-007-9068-4

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