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Numerical Methods for Flow in Fractured Porous Media

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Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media

Part of the book series: Advanced Structured Materials ((STRUCTMAT,volume 13))

Abstract

We present a numerical technique for the simulation of salinity- as well as thermohaline-driven flows in fractured porous media. In this technique, the fractures are represented by low-dimensional manifolds, on which a low-dimensional variant of the PDEs of variable-density flow is formulated. The latter is obtained from the full-dimensional model by the average-along-the-vertical. The discretization of the resulting coupled system of the full- and low-dimensional PDEs is based on a finite-volume method. This requires a special construction of the discretization grid which can be obtained by the algorithm presented in this work. This technique allows to reconstruct in particular the jumps of the solution at the fracture. Its precision is demonstrated in the numerical comparisons with the results obtained in the simulations where the fractures are represented by the full-dimensional subdomains.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the German Ministry for Economy and Technology (Bundesministerium für, Wirtschaft und Technologie), contract 02E10326, and a fellowship from HIC4FAIR in the LOEWE program of the state Hessen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. G-CSC University of Frankfurt, Kettenhofweg 139, 60325, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Sabine Stichel, Dmitriy Logashenko, Alfio Grillo, Sebastian Reiter, Michael Lampe & Gabriel Wittum

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  1. Sabine Stichel
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  2. Dmitriy Logashenko
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  3. Alfio Grillo
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  4. Sebastian Reiter
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  5. Michael Lampe
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  6. Gabriel Wittum
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Correspondence to Alfio Grillo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade do Porto, Laboratorio de Fisica das, Faculdade de Engenharia, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, 4200-465, Portugal

    J.M.P.Q. Delgado

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Stichel, S., Logashenko, D., Grillo, A., Reiter, S., Lampe, M., Wittum, G. (2012). Numerical Methods for Flow in Fractured Porous Media. In: Delgado, J. (eds) Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media. Advanced Structured Materials, vol 13. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21966-5_4

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