DfnWorks: A discrete fracture network framework for modeling subsurface flow and transport

Jeffrey D. Hyman, Satish Karra, Nataliia Makedonska, Carl W. Gable, Scott L. Painter, Hari S. Viswanathan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

349 Scopus citations

Abstract

DFNWORKS is a parallelized computational suite to generate three-dimensional discrete fracture networks (DFN) and simulate flow and transport. Developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory over the past five years, it has been used to study flow and transport in fractured media at scales ranging from millimeters to kilometers. The networks are created and meshed using dfnGen, which combines fram (the feature rejection algorithm for meshing) methodology to stochastically generate three-dimensional DFNs with the LaGriT meshing toolbox to create a high-quality computational mesh representation. The representation produces a conforming Delaunay triangulation suitable for high performance computing finite volume solvers in an intrinsically parallel fashion. Flow through the network is simulated in dfnFlow, which utilizes the massively parallel subsurface flow and reactive transport finite volume code pflotran. A Lagrangian approach to simulating transport through the DFN is adopted within dfnTrans to determine pathlines and solute transport through the DFN. Example applications of this suite in the areas of nuclear waste repository science, hydraulic fracturing and CO2 sequestration are also included.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)10-19
Number of pages10
JournalComputers and Geosciences
Volume84
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1 2015

Funding

The various tools under dfn W orks and the overall workflow have been developed through the support of various funding programs including LANL's DR research Project # 20140002DR , U.S. Department of Energy Strategic Center for Natural Gas and Oil project on ‘Fundamentals of Unconventional Reservoirs' and the U.S. Department of Energy Used Fuel Disposal campaign . Jeffrey Hyman acknowledges the support of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory through Grant # DE-AC52-06NA25396 . Satish Karra thanks Glenn Hammond and Gautam Bisht for their help with explicit unstructured grid implementation and corresponding I/O in pflotran .

Keywords

  • CO<inf>2</inf> sequestration
  • Conforming Delaunay triangulation
  • Discrete fracture networks
  • Fractured porous media
  • Hydraulic fracturing
  • Subsurface flow and transport

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